by Holly Jahangiri | Jun 17, 2015
The 1990s are calling. They want their Internet back.
Sitting here, enjoying a warm cup of coffee from my “RTFM” mug, I realize some of you aren’t even old enough to remember a day before “blogging” was a thing. Back when the Internet wasn’t free, but we had freedom. Back before a quick Google search for rules blog* netted “about 551,000,000 results.” WTF?
People, you cry out for free speech and yet you are so shackled by this need for “rules” over it that you will make them up at the drop of a hat and seek to impose them on yourself and others in the name of something to blog about. Holy cats, why?
Not that things like, “Know how to construct coherent sentences and string them together in reasonably clear paragraphs” isn’t important. Not that civility doesn’t require common sense and etiquette – general good manners that might be considered “rules” of a polite society. Stuff you learned when you were three, one can hope. So here are my proposed 5 Rules for Blogging:
- Comply with applicable laws and don’t plead ignorance as an excuse. “Applicable laws” would be your local laws, including copyright, and your web host’s terms of service. If you’re reviewing or selling stuff on your blog, read about the FTC’s new guidelines for reviewers.
- Don’t be a jerk in the name of web traffic or “just because you can.” There’s trolling just to be a jerk – to make strangers’ lives miserable for your own entertainment – and there’s satire and controversy. Know the difference.
- If the blog topic you’re considering has “about 551,000,000 results” already–and you should do a quick search or two to find out–consider whether the Internet really needs you spending your precious life’s moments writing more of the same. Come up with something fresh and original, or go fly a kite. Seriously – Google “how to make a kite” and “how to fly a kite” and go do it. If you have nothing new to say, why blog at all?
- You own your own stories and experiences, and that is all that makes you stand out in the blogging world. Share those, because they are what make you interesting and they are what keep your readers coming back for more.
- If you’re a happy blogger, breaking no actual laws and bothering no one, do not get tangled up in someone else’s “rules for blogging” post. Do your thing. Be happy.
Now get off my lawn, kids. Go read a book. 😉
by Holly Jahangiri | Feb 10, 2015
Or, Have You Hugged a Forum Moderator Today?
Originally published about a decade ago, but still just as true today, if not moreso. “Living well is the best revenge.”
From 1988 until 1994, I was a SysOp (old-fashioned term for “Moderator”) on Genie. Most of you are too young, or too new to high tech even to remember Genie, but for a while there it was a hot competitor of CompuServe, back before there was such a thing as Prodigy or AOL or Earthlink, and long before the days of DSL. (I won’t bore you with those old sob stories about how we chatted on an ASCII text based system at 300 baud and thought it was blazingly fast, or how in the early days of “chat” on CompuServe, it was called “CB” to make clear the similarity to Citizen’s Band Radio, which had been all the rage not so very long before that…)
I was a Senior Assistant in the Writers’ Ink RoundTable. Writing.com is the closest thing I’ve found to such a warm, funny, serious, playful, supportive, argumentative, kind, snide, silly, close-knit community of writers online since Writers’ Ink. It even has the same hierarchy of newbies, old timers, Assistant SysOps, Senior Assistant SysOps, and Head Cheeses (not to be confused with head cheese, most of the time).
This was an unpaid and thankless job, much like I assume being a moderator anywhere is, and mostly a labor of love and addiction. I had assistants reporting to me, and I assure you they were paid every bit as well as I. For the most part, we had a blast interacting with the members of the RoundTable (or “RT” as I shall call it henceforth, to save typing). We ran writing workshops, held online conferences with famous authors (including Anne McCaffrey, Tom Clancy, and Michael Crichton, just to name a few), and we posted endless messages about writing and not writing and ways to avoid both. For kicks on a boring Saturday night, we’d play the online version of “Truth or Dare.” Dares often involved such things as sending the hapless victim over to a serious conference in the Political Science RoundTable with instructions to impersonate a radical left-winger (or right-winger, depending on the night’s topic) or to wander into the Science Fiction and Fantasy RoundTable (our natural rivals, since they laid claim to the SFWA members) and start a virtual food fight while nibbling on pickled alien eggs. Or smack someone with a trout. <:}}||||{{ They think they invented it in the SFRT; I was online the night it all started. I know who smacked who with the first ASCII trout.
Okay, so you had to be there.
Point is, most of the time, we didn’t have “troublemakers.” Troublemakers are rare when they’re paying $6/hour for the privilege of being online at all. All that changed, however, when Genie introduced the $9.95/month all-you-can-eat plan, in competition with Prodigy’s ridiculously cheap offerings and flashy GUI interface.
Suddenly, we had “troublemakers.” We had people who logged on and couldn’t figure out how to log off again. We soon had people who logged on and wrote scripts to keep them from logging off again. (Unlimited bandwidth is nice; however, someone’s got to pay for it, and at this rate, it wasn’t the members. But I digress…) It was all good, until the day I met R.F. I’d love to tell you his real name, but the lawyers won’t let me.
R.F. was bored one sunny Saturday afternoon. (It might’ve been a Sunday, but that’s not important to the story.) R.F. began to post, in the Message Board, “Is anybody online? Wanna chat?” Nothing inherently wrong with that, of course. Except that when he didn’t get an answer quickly, he did it again. And again. And again. In just about every topic on the board. Everyone ignored him, of course. I mean, if you see 100 messages that say “I’m bored, anybody online? Anybody? Wanna chat?” from someone who hasn’t even bothered to introduce himself or join in any of the ongoing conversations, are you gonna bite?
He started posting this in an ongoing, collaborative story that a number of us had been working on for quite some time. And he watched the thread closely; any time a new addition to the story was posted, R.F. would chime in with “Anybody online? Someone talk to me!”
Several of us emailed and explained how the Real-Time Conference Rooms worked. (Every RoundTable had its own RTC “chat” area, and GEnie itself had a whole area devoted to social chit-chat with many, many rooms – much like a tiny version of today’s IRC.) For some reason, though, R.F. had fixated on us.
I was young and stupid then. I dragged R.F. into the RTC chat one afternoon, and spent nearly four straight hours chatting with him, explaining how our little community of writers worked, and giving him hints on how to fit in if he wanted to be a part of it. At that point, I sincerely believed that he was a clueless wonder who genuinely wanted to belong. He even made a little effort at staying on topic and joining in some ongoing conversations in the Message Board. I felt that high that Evangelists must feel upon learning that a sinner has heard their words, seen the light, and converted. Halleluiah!
The next day, I was chagrined to see more drivel from R.F. “Why won’t anyone talk to me?” Fed up, I deleted his messages. He’d been welcomed, cajoled, ignored, warned… well, fuck it. Delete, delete, delete.
Next thing you know, I have mail. R.F. is going to report me to the New York Times, the L.A. Herald, the AP Newswire, CBS, NBC, ABC, the BBC… basically, anyone who’ll listen, and tell them how I’ve single-handedly stomped on, trampled on, mutilated and spindled his First Amendment Right to Freedom of Expression.
Yeah… whatever.
Fortunately for me, I was in law school at the time. I was not a government entity, nor was GEnie a public forum. That pretty much solved that worry. I had the absolute right to delete his ass and even lock him out of the RT, if I chose to be snotty about it. The contract holder for the RT, and GEnie itself, might have something to say about it (along the lines of “be nice to the nasty customer, because he IS a customer”) but basically, R.F. didn’t have a leg to stand on. I wrote back something to the effect of Fine, yeah, you do that – and next time you write to me, please cc: my boss. I’ve already sent him copies of all our previous correspondence.
And then I watched the news just to be sure…
Oh, yes, I did.
Somehow, and I don’t remember all the details now, R.F. managed to make a sufficient nuisance of himself that I ended up having to lock him out of the Writers’ Ink RT altogether. By then, I didn’t even care if my name was on the evening news. I’d had enough. I was tired. I was tired of trying to bring the lost wolf in sheep’s clothing into the fold, and tired of arguing with him about the First Amendment, and tired of being stalked and hounded in the RT at every turn. So I just slammed and barred the door. Next time he logged on, the electronic bouncer kicked him to the curb.
I’d never locked anyone out before. Never. I felt bad. My hands shook. But it was quiet, and things quickly settled back down to normal, and a number of people thanked me for taking decisive action.
Then I got a phone call one morning, on my way to work, from the Boss. Oh, what a softie he was! (This guy had the patience of a saint, I tell you. He’d back his assistants against all comers, but he was always the diplomat.) “I called R.F. on the phone last night. We had a little ‘man-to-man chat,’ and I think he’s straightened out now. He wanted back in, and I really think he understood what was expected of him. I’m confident he’ll behave himself now, so I let him back in.”
What? I thought. Oh, shit on a shingle. “Well, you’re the boss. If you’re sure…” I reminded him that I was going out of town, on a family vacation, and would not have a PC with me. He’d have to keep an eye on things and deal with R.F. personally, in my absence, should he start giving other staff members or member members a hard time.
I called my assistant long distance and explained. I heard a protracted groan on the other end of the line. “You’re kidding, right? They had a ‘man-to-man chat’? Is that even possible with R.F.?”
“Look,” I said, “if anything happens while I’m gone, you guys will have to deal with it. I’m betting R.F. does something to get himself locked out, or at least make S. wish he’d never let him back in, before I get back. And I’m dying to know what that is. So here’s the deal. If S. has to lock R.F. out again, I want you to call our hotel and order a bottle of their cheapest champagne sent to me by room service. That’ll be our code. Since there’s nothing I can do about it from there, I might as well drink champagne and get some kick out of it.”
We got to the hotel about three days later, and there was no message. No champagne greeting upon our arrival. All was well. Or was it?
A couple of hours after checking in, there was a knock on the door. My husband had gone downstairs for a drink with a friend and former coworker, and my daughter and I were getting ready for bed. I pulled a robe around myself and peeked through the peephole. It was about 9:00 PM! Who would be knocking? Ahhhhhh. Yes, room service. A very nicely dressed waiter bearing a silver tray, upon which was a silver ice bucket bearing a bottle of champagne, and – what the hell? A huge, crystal bowl of strawberries. Fresh, luscious strawberries – probably forty of them – each as big as a small plum, and each one utterly perfect and unblemished.
Oh, dear God, what had R.F. done now? There was even a card, “signed” by R.F.!! “Having a grand time, glad you’re not here!” I took the tray, and immediately called my assistant, K.
“Okay, what’s the scoop?”
She laughed and asked me to give her a minute to catch her breath. “Well, the minute R.F. got word you’d left town, he started posting messages all over the board with the lyrics to ‘Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead!’”
“Hah! But that surely wasn’t enough to get him locked out.”
“No, it should’ve been, but of course it wasn’t.”
“Well, what did it?”
“He posted a message in the main Message Board topic consisting of a thousand blank lines.”
I didn’t get it at first. “1000 blank lines? So? What was the point of that?”
“Think about it. Most of the members log on at 2400 baud or less. At 2400 baud, it takes about 5 minutes for a blank message that size to scroll across the screen. By that time, most people think their PC has just locked up, so they force a disconnect, reboot, and log on again.”
“Oh, God.”
“Wait, it gets better. Because they never finished reading the message, it’s still marked ‘unread.’”
“And it happens again.”
“You got it. People have been calling customer support, thinking it’s a system problem.”
“So S. locked him out?”
“For life.”
“So much for their little ‘man-to-man chat.’ S. must be terribly disappointed.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“Okay, that explains the champagne, but K., what’s with these incredible strawberries??”
“Oh!” K. laughed. “That’s on the house. Paid for by the hotel. When I got room service, I explained the whole story to them. They agreed that the champagne was good vindication, and threw in the strawberries for free!”
Don’t think I learned my lesson. Oh, no. I went on to run a forum on another network, and later took a real, paying job with them as a Product Marketing Manager.
That company went bankrupt four months later. My boss assured me that he wasn’t disappointed in me and that “Jesus Christ himself couldn’t have saved it.”
As if that weren’t enough, I went on to run another forum on the Internet for just over a year, until they realized they didn’t have to actually pay their Moderators – they had people lined up begging to do it for free. (I think the word I’m searching for here is “masochists,” but that would be admitting I was one, wouldn’t it?) There are various reasons for wanting to be a Moderator – some involving “phenomenal cosmic powers!” but most stemming from a much simpler desire to be active and helpful members of a community they’ve come to love.
Would I ever do anything like that again?
Please don’t ask me. I’m weak, and they don’t have a Twelve Step program for online addiction yet.
Ironically, not long after posting this the first time, I was appointed a Moderator on Writing.com. You just can’t kick some habits.
Send a note of appreciation to your favorite Moderator(s) today. Sure, it’s a prestigious position and lots of fun, most of the time. But if you’ve never been one, you have no idea the shit they put up with and how very much it means to have a little note saying “Gee, you do a great job around here. Keep it up!”
by Holly Jahangiri | Oct 31, 2014
There was a loud pounding on my dorm room door. “Your mother is downstairs.”
Roused from a deep, Saturday morning sleep, my first thought was, “Why?” My second: “Oh, shit.” We had a family portrait session scheduled with a photographer – not the cheap kind you get at Sears, but a professional photographer. I hadn’t showered. I hadn’t done anything with my hair. My clothes – though clean enough not to smell of sweat and zombies – were rumpled. “Oh, shit!” I pulled things together as fast as I could, but it was not fast enough to suit my mom, and she was livid.
I’ll spare you the lecture. Suffice it to say, her nickname was “Master of the Eight-Hour Lecture.” Spent from lecturing, the icy silence that ensued was even worse.
Fortunately, the pictures turned out good in spite of everything. Here I am, all 5’11” of me, looking much shorter than my 5’5″ mother. I felt even smaller.
My mother always kept a calendar, and dates mattered. You could get by with almost anything – except for failing to remember loved ones on important holidays, birthdays, and milestone events like graduations or anniversaries. Or portrait sittings.
Eventually, she forgave me. Probably around the time she saw the proofs.
But this particular photo has always been a reminder of my failings – I would forget my own birthday if my husband didn’t start asking me, about a week before it, what I wanted for a present. At my age, it’s always the same thing: “A reprieve?” I never get that. Chocolate and tech gadgetry will do, instead.
After my Mom died, on Valentine’s Day, 2002 – no doubt to ensure that none of us would ever forget the date – strange things began to happen. I wish I could say that she appeared to me on the stairs, and that we had long, late-night conversations about life, aging, and women’s issues. I’m sure if she could, we would have, by now. Lest you think she was all fury and ice, she was my best friend, as well as being my Mom. But she has managed to make her presence known – on occasion.
You may think I’m nuts (and I don’t much care), but my daughter will vouch for this: Whenever my daughter or I did anything my mother would have disapproved of, this photo launched itself at our heads.
Seriously.
I have had this happen even when the photo is laying flat on a shelf, nowhere near the edge. God help any knick-knacks that stand in its way – it takes them with it. This has also happened to my daughter. Forget an important date? Get whacked in the head with the photo. Argue with your mother? Get whacked in the head with the photo.
You may wonder why I keep it on a bookshelf, near my desk. Why I haven’t packed it away in a box and stuffed it in the attic for safety’s sake.
For some reason, this has never been scary to me. And it hasn’t happened in a good, long while. I am tempted to blow off my Dad’s birthday in a couple of days, just to see if Mom will throw this across the room and smack me in the nose with it. (Just kidding, Dad!) I miss my Mom, and if that’s the best I can get, I’ll take it.
by Holly Jahangiri | Feb 15, 2014
I used to be a little ham. (You don’t look surprised.) Here’s me, singing on board the S.S. United States in their “Teen Talent Show,” Christmas 1968.
Our waiter, Jose, talked me into it.
“What are you going to do?” asked my mother.
“Sing.”
“Sing what?”
“Edelweiss.” I’d only seen “The Sound of Music” once, but I liked the song. My grandfather, whom I adored, loved the song – it always brought tears to his eyes to hear me sing it. He was originally from Germany, and left his homeland before WWII.
I loved to sing, and memorized things quickly.
My aunt, a talented pianist, accompanied me; she was one of those rare musicians who was able to sight read music, play by ear, and transpose music in her head. She discovered that I was most comfortable singing Edelweiss in the key of G. I barely remember singing, though – what I most vividly remember was that man in the white jacket, and the woman standing beside him, worrying that I would drop the heavy microphone. I didn’t. Easy as pie.
When I was done, my mom (who had an ulcer) was so relieved that everything went well, I think she tossed her cookies. Overboard, with any luck. My grandmother, beaming with pride, stood up and took bows. Me, I got to eat a chocolate-covered ice cream bar out on deck without having to change clothes first. You know you’ve done okay when you’re five and the grown-ups let you eat ice cream while wearing black velvet and white chiffon.
After that, I didn’t hesitate to sing with the piano player (or accordionist) at the Topps Restaurant in Canton, Ohio; we ate there often enough with my grandparents that I felt comfortable and utterly uninhibited. At five or six, I was blissfully unaware of the awkward effect that might have on other diners – though they always acted as if they were thoroughly charmed by the added “entertainment.” Perhaps they were just entirely too polite and too indulgent to say, “Please, child, sit down now and be quiet.”
Of course, that thought never would have occurred to me had I not received a tape recorder for my tenth birthday. I was delighted! (Hey, that was the latest technology back then, and not every ten-year-old was so spoiled as to have their very own cassette tape recorder. No, it wasn’t reel-to-reel; I’m not that old.) I recorded my own impromptu, extemporaneous “radio show” right then and there. I sang “Happy Birthday to ME!” and declared “I’m ten today! I shall never be nine again!”
Oh, joy! Oh, bliss! I would sing, or be a radio D.J., or…
Or…I don’t know what I was thinking. The grown-ups got hold of the tape and chuckled. They declared it “charming,” and “adorable,” and gushed, “don’t you have a lovely voice?” And a little, previously-unheard voice – the nascent inner critic – whispered, “They’re your family. They have to say that. They just don’t want you to feel bad.” I heard myself on that tape, for the first time, you see. It was nothing like the voice resonating inside my head. It was…embarassing.
And still, I loved to sing. I would shut the door to my room, lock it, turn on the radio or the record player, crank up the volume, and sing – as softly as I could. Later, I’d learn that this led to bad habits and horrible breathing technique that would have to be painstakingly unlearned, but it was a survival skill, at the time. If anyone happened to overhear and comment, I would flush red and hot and cry tears of humiliation and frustration, and muffle my mouth with a pillow.
At fifteen, I recognized all this for the psychological disorder it had become, and enrolled in voice lessons at the community college. Private lessons. During the first one, my instructor demanded that I sing a scale, so that she might get an idea of my range. I managed to squeak out a passable “Do – re – mi…” before dissolving in tears. Someone walked into the classroom, and I spent the rest of the hour sobbing, trying to explain to my teacher why.
She didn’t kick me out. She handed me a Kleenex and gave me homework. “I’ll see you Wednesday,” she said. She didn’t ask if I planned to turn tail and run, to drop the class, to drop off the face of the earth. I nodded. I’d be there Wednesday, and every day we had class for the rest of the semester. Jo N. was tough; she didn’t sugarcoat anything. If I missed a note, she told me I was flat, or sharp, or breathy. She demanded that I project and sing to the back of the room. She dragged out of me what was dying, literally, to come out. And then came a precious word of praise. “Not bad, not bad at all. Let’s see if you can do even better next time.” I’d earned that, and it was wonderful. I could trust it. Jo didn’t love me. She didn’t have to say nice things about me. My confidence grew as my trust in her grew. Constructive criticism from someone who knew what they were doing began to silence the inner critic and heal whatever it was I’d broken, hearing that tape, years ago.
My heart sank, though, when Jo explained to me what I’d have to do for my final exam. “Voice juries,” she told me, involved singing three songs in three different languages for the entire music faculty; they would grade my performance. Oh, no no no no no…
“You’re ready,” she assured me.
Inside, a little voice whimpered, “No I’m not!” and the critic sneered, “Why don’t you just give it up and go home? Sing in the shower, when no one’s around to hear you.” I looked at Jo and felt trapped. She had faith in me, and I had no idea why. But I didn’t want to let her down. She was a good teacher. She wouldn’t let me stand there in front of her peers, her colleagues, and embarass her. “Okay.”
And I managed to get through it. One look at those instructors, and fear turned me to stone. Once I figured out how to breathe again, singing was easy. I even argued over my pronunciation of German with the head of the music department. He had almost given me a failing grade, until I stood up for myself and told him he was wrong – that my pronunciation was just fine, thank you – I’d learned it from my grandfather. “Where is your grandfather from?” he asked.
“Germany. Tauberbischofsheim. I should think he knows German, and how to pronounce it properly,” I said, indignant at the suggestion that my grandfather might not know his own native language.
“Ah, Bavaria. That explains it. When we sing, formally, we use the Hochdeutsche, or High German, not the softer Bavarian dialects. But you’re correct, if that’s where you learned it, so I won’t count off – you didn’t know. Just remember this for future reference.” He didn’t flunk me. I got a B for the semester.
I got cocky and enrolled in chorus, and group voice lessons. We sang Vivaldi’s Gloria, that year. I chose “Domine Deus, Agnus Dei” for my final exam. “You’re kidding, right?” asked Jo. First hint of non-confidence I’d seen from her, though I’d spent much of the semester hiding between strong alto voices and trying to blend in.
“No, that’s what I’ve chosen – is that all right?”
“It’s fine.” The expression on her face said, “It’s your funeral,” but she placed the sheet music on the rest and began to play. In truth, it was the only sheet music I could find in a key I could comfortably sing, and the only thing I knew well enough – the night before the final – to hand to her that day. I began to sing, and Jo stopped playing. I stopped singing. Wrong move.
“Why did you stop?” she asked.
“You stopped.”
“So? Did I tell you to stop if I stopped?”
Oh, dear G-d. She couldn’t seriously expect me to take my final exam a capella? In front of people!? “Sorry. Can we start over?” Please don’t stop, please don’t stop, please, dear G-d in Heaven, don’t stop…
She stopped. I didn’t. My voice became a prayer. “Domine Deus…agnus Dei filius patrii…” I forgot that there were other people in the room. I forgot Jo was in the room. I forgot I was in the room. I just let it fly – straight up to G-d and beyond. And when the song was nearly finished, Jo joined back in with the piano (I felt like saying “A day late and a dollar short,” but why be petty?) and looked at me with cold fury. “It’s about damned time,” she said.
“Huh?”
“You finally sound like a real Alto.”
And that’s a good thing, right? “Thank you?”
“Now I know what you’re capable of doing, I want to know what the Hell you’ve been doing all semester until now?”
Ummm…ooops? I didn’t have an answer to that one. That was the most wonderfully backhanded compliment I’d ever received, and one that would stick with me forever. And I was so elated that after class, I joined forces with another Alto, and we talked Jo into playing piano for us while we attempted “Laudamus Te,” a fairly challenging Soprano duet.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope!” The other girl and I laughed and attacked the duet with gusto, if not skill. We pretty much managed to hit about 87% of the notes, too, I think. Jo just grinned and shook her head.
Later, she told me that I didn’t have the voice to be a voice major. I was crushed. “Have you considered majoring in Music Education?” she asked. I was too young and too stupid, at the time, to see what a compliment this was – coming from a tough-as-nails instructor with a Masters in Music Ed.
I still don’t sing in public. I sing – loudly – in my car. I’ll even roll the windows down on a summer day, and risk other drivers hearing a few bars. I’ll sing in the shower – if no one’s home. But it’s okay; I’m not turning my face to the pillow and stifling the joy. I still wish I sounded like the voice in my head, but my real voice will do.
I don’t, however, do karaoke.
I would – I told my husband, once, that I would, if only he’d ply me with three stiff drinks, first. He obliged – and I figured he must really want to see me get up on stage and make a fool of myself, to take such a risk at his own company Christmas party. “Well?” he said, as I finished the third drink and eyed the stage longingly. “Are you going to do it?”
“If the next person who gets up there is worse than I think I could ever be, I’ll go for it.” Most had been; I was just working up the last of the nerve required to make my feet move. But damned if the next person to get up and sing wasn’t a mentally handicapped busboy. He took the microphone and made a heartfelt, joyful noise unto the Lord with his cockeyed but sincere rendition of “Away in a Manger.” There was no way I could follow that act, after what I’d said, and not go straight to Hell.
I guess my husband had the exact same thought. He leaned over and whispered, “You can’t do it now, can you?” and laughed softly.
“No way.” We smiled at each other, and at this radiant young man on-stage. I’d get my shot at karaoke some day; for now, let it just be Christmas.
Photo Credits: William Ferguson (aka, my dad). 🙂
by Holly Jahangiri | Jan 31, 2014
Torshi-e Makhlut
(Recipe adapted from Food of Life, by Najmieh Batmanglij; commentary compliments of the chef. My copy of the cookbook is apparently the “old” Food of Life; I’m not sure if this recipe’s in the “new” edition or not. I highly recommend any cookbook by this woman, though – the instructions are clear, the photos lovely, and your results are almost guaranteed to look like the pictures if you follow the recipes as written. Even if they don’t, they’ll taste great.)
2 large eggplants
2 green peppers
1 lb. carrots
½ lb. turnips
½ head cauliflower
1 lb. pearl onions (you could use regular onions if peeling these is frustrating, but the texture won’t be the same)
5 cloves garlic
½ c. chopped mint leaves (or equivalent dried herb)
½ c. chopped parsley (or equivalent dried herb)
½ c. chopped coriander (cilantro) leaves (or equivalent dried herb)
½ c. chopped basil leaves (or equivalent dried herb)
3-4 quarts wine vinegar
2 T. salt
½ tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 T. gol-par (powdered angelica)
1 tsp. advieh (Iranian allspice; substitute allspice, if unavailable)
3 tsp. siah daneh (Nigella or black caraway seeds – and yes, you CAN use regular caraway seeds, but it’s different)
¼ tsp. cayenne pepper
1. Prick the eggplants with a fork to prevent bursting and bake on oven rack for 1 hour at 350ºF.
2. Wash green peppers and cut into small pieces. Scrape carrots, wash, and chop fine. Wash turnips and chop. Wash cauliflower and separate into small flowerets. Wash and chop celery. Clean and wash pearl onions. Peel and chop garlic cloves.
3. Wash herbs and drain. Dry thoroughly, then chop.
4. Place baked eggplant on wooden cutting board. Remove and discard skin; chop flesh into small pieces. Sprinkle with salt. Cover with a clean towel and let stand for about an hour.
5. Cook chopped eggplant in 2 c. vinegar over medium heat for about 10 minutes.
6. Place eggplant, 2 quarts vinegar, salt, pepper, gol-par, advieh (or allspice), siah daneh (caraway seeds), cayenne pepper, chopped herbs, garlic, and vegetables in a large bowl. Mix well. Add more vinegar if necessary.
7. Sterilize jars in boiling water. Dry thoroughly with a clean towel. Fill to within ½ inch of the top with the mixture. Sprinkle with salt and fill to the brim with vinegar. Seal the jars.
8. Store in a cool place for at least 10 days before using.
This photo was taken in 2006, I think. It was the first time I’d made torshi in over a decade, “because it’s a pain in the ass to make.” It’s actually not – not if you have a good cutting board, a sharp knife, a good five hours, a willingness to use dried herbs instead of insisting on fresh everything (it’s PICKLES – seriously – use dried herbs!) and have a Zen attitude about the whole thing. A food processor can be helpful, but it’s easy to chop the vegetables too fine with it. They’re much better if they’re small but chunky.
When it comes to canning and putting up things in jars, I’m clueless; I do know that the lids should pop down in order to properly seal. As I recall, the mixture needs to be quite warm in order for the jars to seal properly; the cooling liquid sucks the lid down and forms a vacuum. My sister-in-law and I got around he problem of jars that wouldn’t seal on the first try by using a large stock pot for the “bowl” in step 6 and dumping the jars back into it if the seals failed to pop down after about 15 minutes. We heated the stuff up a bit, then tried again. Look, there’s enough vinegar and salt in this stuff that no one’s going to get sick. (In fact, probably no one’s going to get sick if the seals don’t pop in, either. I’m told I suffer from an overabundance of American caution.)
My mother-in-law was convinced we were going to kill everyone in the family the first time we made this. Not for the reasons I thought we were going to – her concerns were metallurgic and chemical, and had nothing to do with food-borne pathogens and fears of botulism. She asked what kind of pot we were using. I said “anodized aluminum,” as in that professional, semi-non-stick, fired-at-2000-degrees, indestructible stuff that costs a fortune and weighs a ton – not just some cheap aluminum pot. She started spouting off nonsense about aluminum and vinegar combining to release deadly toxins. I yelled at my sister-in-law to open the windows, and then realized this was one of those old wives’ tales that might have some basis in reality, but we weren’t going to find out the truth of it first-hand any time soon. But use glass or anodized aluminum. Avoid cheap metal pots and Teflon-coated things, as the vinegar might damage the pots – not because it’s likely to kill you.
My mother-in-law wouldn’t touch that batch of torshi for over a year. Maybe she got the last laugh, though. I hear the longer it sits, the better it tastes. I’m not sure how long is too long, though, so I suggest opening within 2-3 years (assuming the seal’s intact) and using it within 6-12 months of opening it. The recommendation is based only on personal experience and how long I’ve kept the stuff without getting sick or dying. For all I know, it’s like a Twinkie and could last nearly forever. Be sure to refrigerate after opening.
This is an incredible cookbook. I highly recommend it; not only are the instructions clear and easy-to-follow, but the pictures look good enough to eat and show you how the dish should look, when you’re done. Amazingly, they actually do look that way, if you follow the recipes! I got this shortly after I was married, and my husband’s family brags on what a good Persian cook I am. It’s all thanks to these recipes.
Once you understand how it works, you can get a little creative. Not too creative… no, seriously, try different things. I think the original recipe called for celery, but my husband’s not fond of it so I left it out. My daughter likes extra cauliflower, but isn’t too fond of the carrots. I adjust the proportions. The seasoning’s important. That said, last year I forgot the garlic and cayenne, and everybody loved it. It’s a pretty forgiving recipe.
The recipe usually yields about 6 to 12 pints. What you see, above, was a double batch. It’s more fun with a friend – just make sure you make enough to share!
