Dr. Saber Miresmailli
Art and Hobbies
The love of art and craft was instilled in me since an early age. My late father played multiple instruments and my mom danced. It was such a joyful experience to wait for dad to come home, pick up one of his many instruments and start something and jam.
​The ability to appreciate beautiful things and also create beautiful things is a blessing that I inherited from my parents. Be it paintings, literature, calligraphy, plays or symphonies…
I should confess, one thing that I could not related to or connect to is what is categorically called contemporary or modern art. I am more of a classic kinda guy who can’t understand the profound meaning of a banana that is taped to a wall!!!
Music is and has always been an important part of my life. Have you seen those movies where the main character hears a voice in his or her head narrating something with a nice undertone music? Well I don't hear voices in my head :) but oftentimes I do hear music in my head while I do mundane tasks.
I love world music. In my playlist, you will find many languages, many genres and many styles of music. Oftentimes, if someone drives with me, they get pretty shocked to see how I switch from Ravi Shankar to Dimmu Borgir followed by Charles Aznavour and Bebo y Cigala as if it is normal :)
I studied polyphony and orchestration. I still can pick up a partitur and tune in, into one instrument and follow it in a symphony. I play piano, flamenco guitar, cajon, Persian perussion and string instruments and recently, I am challenging myself with a Cello!
I composed my first piece of music in 1994 and I jokingly tell some of my colleagues, this piece is older than you! And it is true!
In addition to music, I recently started calligraphy. I never stoped writing but writing with the iPad does not give me the same feeling of ink and paper. It is a joyful art which you can continue to advance in it.
Many people know me as the Hot Sauce Guy!!! How I ended up being the hot sauce guy I dont know. Legend has it that during my childhood, I wandered off in a bazar while I was with my mom and ended up in front of a spice shop. The fella was annoyed by a kid touching everything so he gave me a mean pepper to get rid of me yet that experiences opened a whole new world of appreciation that I did not know I had in me. Ever since that moment, I became the only person in my entire family who would add hot peppers to anything. Mind you, Persian cuisine is not hot and spicy. We do use very mild aromatics like cardamom and saffron but no chilies. I on the other hand, live and breath hot sauce.
Fast forward to a new country and a new decade, I am now growing crazy peppers and using my little knowledge of chemistry to mix and match all the mean ones and create a sauce that you cannot and will not forget. If the heat is below a million scovile, then it is childs´ play. This is not just mixing and matching things here and there! I actually do use my science to create a cocktail that provides a delayed action where in the first 10 seconds, you feel meh this is easy and then it gets you…this is why I called in the G-Sauce because that is what you will scream once it starts to work!
Perhaps the proudest moment of this endeavor was when I handed the Canadian Astronaut, Jenny Gibbons a bottle of my hot sauce that she took to NASA. I am probably the only home hot sauce maker with a product that went beyond this planet!!!
​
Photography is another art that I learned from my late father. Second to riding motorcycles, photography allow you to see the world differently. You are continuously compositing the perfect shot and you pay attention to all the details, the light, the objects, colors, vibrance and the overall mood in a scene. Many people think to be a good photographer you need a fancy camera and many expensive lenses. Well, while the equipment certainly help cover some of your mistakes in composing the shot, it wont create a masterpiece just because you dropped few thousand cool dollars!
I started with Film! A simple Canon A1 with good old film that I used to develop myself. Then I graduated to my first digital DSLR and started to explore possibilities. The main difference was that I could afford to make more mistakes because I was not limited to only 36 shots! Also I could instantly see what I did and right away correct myself.
But after many years of practice, I developed a liking for capturing movement through still photography. The old version of Live Picture if you may. This is a play between light and aperture that allow you to create certain effect and deliver the motion to the viewer. I sold few of my pictures and some of them ended up on official websites yet the once’s that are near and dear to my heart are those black and white shots that I tool while checking out various music venues…can you hear the music through my picture?
​
Food is the common denominator of humanity. I travelled all over the world and even in places where I did not speak the language (and I speak five), when I shared food with locals and show them how much I appreciate the food they eat, I instantly become their friend.
When you see a plate, it is not just a mix of ingredients and nutrient; It is the culmination of culture, tradition and history of a nation served in a plate. When you respect it, when you try it and enjoy it, you should your respect for their culture and heritage. I never understood those people who eat McDonald’s every where they go! Besides that fact that one can argue McDonald is not even food, it is just sad to see someone ignore the cornucopia of delicious local offerings and look for questionable artificial yet familiar object solely due to the fear of unknown.
​
So…Not only I am a notorious foodie, I am also a dedicated amateur chef! I can roll my own sushi, make my own birria, assemble a mean dish of moussaka and cook the best bhindi masala you ever had! Not only I love to cook, I love to decorate food, grow food, eat food, talk about food and travel for food! And yes, I did spend a small fortune on cook ware and tools and utensils that allow my to cook. My only problem is that I can not cook small portions! I must have people around and I must share the joy!
​
I love motorcycles and fast cars! Luckily this did not kill me while I had my fun with the fast toys back in the days. I for sure have multiple injuries and bad ass stories that goes with them but I am retired from my motorcycle riding career and I find a simple inexpensive fix for my love of speed in my tiny little Mazda Miata. Riding Motorcycles, specially a crutch rocket like my bike, gives you a whole different perspective in life. I am a defensive rider. Thanks to this hobby I can scan my surroundings and assess all the different things that can kill me! The assumption is that everything on the road is a mean to my demise.
I did came face to face with death on motorcycle multiple times but I think the most remarkable one was when I was going at around 130 KM per hour when I noticed a spider inside my helmet walking on my visor and blocking my left eyes. It was your garden variety spider yet when it is 4 cm away from your eye as you are leaning into a turn it for sure can be unsettling. If it was not for my love of arthropods, I probably would have done something stupid and get myself killed that day. Now imagine going in a highway for a while with one eye on the spider and one eye on the road! It was fun!
My beloved motorcycle is now an ornament in my office and a reminder of those good old days!
I started a podcast three years ago but I have confess I want not as regular about it as I wish I should have. The idea is to be the voice of the growers who are usually the unsung heroes of the food industry. Everyone knows a famous chef but those folks can not do anything without access to prime ingredients. The farms are those who enable the chefs. Going forward, I want to be more regular with it. Here you can see the original podcast and the video cast that I started in Mexico.
