Gingerbread!

Continuing the Springtime Catch-up blog marathon... 

When I was in the States for a conference in December, I bought a couple of gingerbread kits - one to make "Ninjabread men" and one to make little houses. We had so much fun with these. I looked EVERYWHERE for molasses, so we could make more, but none was to be found - luckily my Jantzi grands were able to bring some in January. But the kits actually came with everything needed. 

We invited some friends to help us with the little houses - Abby, Daniel, and Elsa - they all had so much fun. Their mom Lizzy and I imagined that they'd keep the houses to look at but actually the kids just couldn't wait to eat them right away.

We made them wait until we could take a picture of all five!

 And then I made my own with leftover pieces. That one hung around a few days before Hansel and Gretel ate it all up. Nobody except Ninjabread men ended up in the oven though. Yay!

Christmas coming

Every afternoon on the way to pick up the kids from school, we pass by this man roasting chestnuts over a charcoal grill! He showed up when the weather started to get cold. He is very kind and always gives me about 50% extra when I buy from him. We have chatted a bit about his family living in New York City and he gladly let me take this picture. Someday I'll ask him his name :-) And hopefully someday the kids will agree to just try one of the chestnuts.

 Near where we live there is a market area called Pazari i Ri, or the New Market. It was recently renovated and fancied up and often there are special events happening there, like this little Christmas bazaar - can you tell what inside the cabin is real and what is fake? (The boy and his mischief are both real, that's a freebie)

And the malls look exactly like malls all over the world at Christmastime. This is Toptani, the newest mall and the only one located near the city center. We also walk past here on the way to and from school. 

So, we bought a little tree! And ornaments that are supposed to look old-fashioned. The kids made a Lego Bethlehem (pics on Facebook).

Today the kids had a make-up school day to replace a day missed a few weeks ago due to heavy rains. It's just a half day, and then in the afternoon they have rehearsal for the church Christmas pageant. So I spent the morning making gingersnaps and listening to Christmas music, so uncharacteristically festive of me!

ñame - sounds like yummy!

Well, this just made my day!

One of the great things about being back in MCC in Latin America has been seeing our old friends Patrocinio and Crecencia again. They were on our MCC team in Bolivia in the '90s, when Terry and I first met - and so did they - they became a couple about a year or so before we did :-). Now they have two smart and terrific kids, and so do we!

Since we've been living in Colombia, Patro has visited twice to help us out with some agricultural project evaluations. He's a born farmer, and just a super capable person in general. One thing he took back to Bolivia with him was a small piece of ñame, a root vegetable (discorea alata) popular among small-scale farmers here, especially in the coastal areas. He just sent us a picture of his first harvest!

This is a terrible picture but it's the only one I have of myself with the family when I visited Bolivia last September. 

I like food, and reading

I'm making one of my favorite zone-friendly and paleo-friendy meals for supper:
> pre-cook some chicken
> in a pan, heat olive oil and add sliced carrots and chopped ginger root
> throw in some almonds if you want
> as the carrots cook, add pieces of chicken
> add crushed garlic to taste
> and a squirt of honey
simmer
Yum.
(if you are following the Zone, measure everything to balance your carbs, proteins, and fats)

~::~

Gabriel is zooming into reading! He is fascinated by the whole process. And very judgmental about English inconsistencies in spelling. Why is "tree" spelled with a "t" when it CLEARLY begins with the "ch" sound??

On the way to school we often play "I spy... something that begins with..." and so he gets annoyed by the idea that tree, train, and truck all start with "t."

But he loves sounding out the written word. Spanish is so straightforward compared to English spelling. He also likes to spell things out orally, e.g. "Mom, I k-n-o-w!" or "give it to M - E!"

It's pretty exciting to see him learning so fast.

Food --> Health

Three months ago I changed my diet and my life. (Yes, I'm going to talk about food again...!)

At the meetings we went to in Guatemala in April, I had bronchitis, I was exhausted, I was miserable, and as part of a reflective exercise I said something about how I wanted to change our family's diet because I thought we wouldn't get sick so much. We'd all had intermittent colds from when we moved to Bogota in November, and pretty much constant colds from February on (when the kids started school), culminating in my case of bronchitis. 

In May, I had my blood pressure crisis, was told very sternly to cut out all salt (when I asked how to do that the doctor said "eat fruits, vegetables, and steamed white meat like chicken and fish") and I actually did. I had been wanting to incorporate fruit and veg smoothies into my diet for a long time - and this was the push (well, the shove, really) I needed. And I have not been sick one day in the last three months. 

Well, caveat: I did catch a cold while we were in Albania - precisely when I went off this diet. Even though I loaded up on fresh fruits, I also went back to eating all the no-nos - and boy did that food taste AMAZING - sausage, cheese, pizza, olive bread - and boy did I feel like crap. 

I'm so happy and thankful to have been able to change my diet, my life, my health like this. I'm so happy that Terry is doing the diet (more or less) with me. I figure that around 70% of what I eat is raw fresh fruits and vegetables, and unsalted nuts. The other 30% is unsalted rice, beans, stir-fry, chicken breast, eggs. (If it were all free-range and organic then I think I would probably turn into a unicorn or something mythical and magical like that.) I feel so good that I don't even miss cheese. I know I'd never be able to do it if I didn't have doctor's orders and Terry's support. 

I'd love to make dramatic changes in the kids' eating habits as well. It's such a battleground though. Gabriel will sip at my smoothies sometimes, and Valerie is opening up to more new flavors. Recently Luz was inspired to create a play kitchen for the kids in one corner of our apartment so that she can through play get them to try tasting more vegetables. So I'm hopeful. They have constant coughs and runny noses here and I think a better diet would help with that too.

(fruit stand in Tirana)

Here is my basic smoothie recipe for those who are interested:

- a handful of almonds

- a chunk of fresh ginger root, diced

- something sweet (strawberries, apples, bananas, mango, papaya)

- something tart (plum, kiwi, green apple)

- something crunchy (apple, pear, cucumber)

- something smooth (avocado, banana, papaya - usually 2 of the 3)

- something surprising (winter squash, raw beet, spinach)

- yoghurt or milk

There are endless variations you can do - I've learned that if you add spinach, a dollop of honey is good; if you add cucumber, it adds a lot of water and you can add less yoghurt/milk. Mixing colors results in something muddy-brown and visually unappealing but can still taste amazing. I never, ever skip the ginger because I love it so much - but one time I did use too much and it was very strong! I've learned to always peel the cucumber, and to use only a small slice of beet (too much and it tastes weird). There are so many other things you could add - Anita like watermelon and basil; I've heard pineapple and celery leaves make a nice combination! It comes out different every time and so good. I often have a boiled egg along with the smoothie for protein so I don't get hungry too soon. 

Happy eating!

Dissertation week

This week has been fun for me because I took the whole week to sit around drinking green smoothies and working on my dissertation! I hope to do this about once a month so that there could actually be a chance of finishing someday... Thanks Terry for covering at the office!

Fooooooooood.....

Right now I'm drinking a delicious smoothie made up of apple, plum, banana, cucumber, avocado, almonds, and fresh ginger root. Oh, and peach yoghurt. Next time I'll make sure to add in some dark leafy greens.

But I don't have a photo of that right now :-)

Instead, I give you Three Roots of Life Tomato Sauce (see previous post):

And a salt-free bean dish I made another day:

I am LOVING my new salt-free diet. I am feeling so, so much better - and at my last check-up, my blood pressure was 110/80! The doctor did a little jig and shook my hand.

Resilience

Last month, we traveled as a family to Guatemala City for a week of meetings with other MCC reps from the Latin American and Caribbean region. Despite being sick most of the time, and despite the kids eating next to nothing, it was a really good time. Aside from regular business, we also had a series of workshops on the theme of resilience.

It was a great theme. We talked about self-care, about work/life balance, about reframing how we think about things to maintain long-term perspective. We talked about the importance of spirituality and strong social support.

I keep thinking how since moving here I feel like I'm in "survival mode" much of the time. One of the things that has taken bottom-level priority has been cooking. We eat out for lunch every day (fixed-menu restaurants for about $3), then the other two meals I'm mostly thinking about what the kids are going to eat, and I eat the leftovers or something. We get take-out rotisserie chicken or order in pizza because it's fast and easy. We've been getting cold after cold, and I've been thinking that if we ate better (which we did to a certain extent when the two pairs of grandparents were here helping out!) we wouldn't get sick so much.
 
Anyway, we got back and I went to the doctor and confirmed that I had bronchitis. Just when I was finishing up my antibiotic treatment and beginning to feel a little better, I developed a crippling headache that didn't quit. Terry was traveling with some visiting project funders, and I was solo parenting and covering for both of us at the office. At the end of the second day, when sleep and Advil did absolutely nothing to touch the headache, I asked a couple team members to watch the kids for me and went to a walk-in clinic where I learned that my blood pressure was 170/120.

So now I'm on a beta blocker and no-sodium diet, and I feel soooooooo much better! It took about 12 hours before the headache abated, and my BP is still around 140/110, but I have my energy and happiness back. I've had to be creative figuring what to eat that has no salt in it. I'm not even supposed to have bread. This morning Terry made me pancakes with no salt and they tasted great! I don't really mind the taste aspect of it, it's the work of preparing food that is a little daunting. But yesterday afternoon I was home with the kids and enjoyed cooking some dishes I used to make before Valerie was born, just without adding salt!

Three Roots of Life Tomato Sauce

- Chop up a large onion and sautee in olive oil with cumin to taste

- as it browns, add chopped up garlic (to taste) and about 1/4 cup grated carrot

- add 3 big chopped up tomatoes

- and diced fresh ginger root and simmer until the tomatoes are soft

- pile on spinach leaves torn into small pieces

- when spinach is wilted, EAT!

I'm gathering a cornucopia of fresh produce into the house. Change is coming.

Parque Simon Bolivar

One place we've enjoyed exploring here is a huge park called Simon Bolivar. There's a lake with ducks and fish, playgrounds, walking paths, a little "train" that goes around, lots of food vendors. 

I have to say again, we've been pleasantly surprised by the weather here - we didn't realize there was a sunny season, we thought we were in for five years of cloudy drizzle! A taxi driver told me that this is coffee-drying season right now. We have had a little rain, but I'm still really surprised by how green everything is given how little it has rained in the last three months. Another person told me "Colombia is a very wet country." 

Here Terry is buying some corn-cakes stuffed with cheese and guava fruit paste - yum! Guava fruit paste, which in Guyana they called "fruit cheese," is a very popular snack/dessert food here. I love it. It's usually sold in little blocks, sometimes with cheese, sometimes with blancmange, called "arequipe" here ("Manjar blanco" in Peru).

Home, Sick

Well, I'm back in Bogota, with some kind of bug - sore throat and bone-tired. Hit the ground running but then took the day off yesterday to just be at home with the kids. It was good. And only coincidence that it was Thanksgiving! We ate noodles, canned beans, peanut butter and jelly, yoghurt. It was a quiet and peaceful day that I think we all needed.

This morning we walked to a private preschool nearby where we're thinking of enrolling Valerie for the coming school year, which starts in January. I have to meet with the director soon to learn more. After that I took the kids with me to the office for the weekly Bogota-staff lunch we share together. It was fun for them, and apparently the whole adventure wore them out because they both fell asleep around 7 p.m.! Amazing.

Off to bed myself.

A really, really long way of saying "we arrived safely" :-)

We are in our new home in Colombia! It doesn’t feel that far away, despite the long haul to get here. Exiting the airport into the crowd felt so familiar. The ambiance of Bogota reminds me a lot of Lima, except that Lima is sea level and Bogota is what, 8,000 feet? Enough that we’re feeling it, anyway. Huge, bustling, noisy, smoggy city with riches, poverty, and “getting by well enough” rubbing shoulders on each corner.

Our neighborhood is near the University and a lot of Mennonites live here, apparently. It’s a quiet nook of a neighborhood with small groceries dotted throughout and a little park with a playground just half a block from our building that the kids LOVE.

Our building is a four-story brick apartment building with purple bougainvillea foaming over the gate. We have six keys, two gates, and three deadbolts to get through every time we want to go in and out. Oh, and a flight of steps since we are on the 2^nd floor. We’ve met our neighbors briefly – a family with tween/teen kids – and they seem very nice. There’s a small patio for parking cars and bikes, but the kids like to pretend it’s the ocean and they are fish swimming away from the ‘octopus’ (me) to hide under the huge spreading potted plants in the corner. Our bedroom overlooks this patio and yesterday I saw an emerald-green hummingbird darting around the plants briefly.

Our apartment is spacious and well-lit, although the lay-out is very odd. A number of the inside walls are set in at non-right angles, and there are some slightly awkward nooks the intended functions of which are unclear. But the kids seem to like it; a lot of furniture left over from previous MCCers is stacked in one corner and we unearthed a box of children’s books that also contained four My Little Ponies. Valerie keeps asking where they came from, I think their appearance was like magic to her.

We’ve been incredibly warmly welcomed by the MCC team here. We arrived late Thursday night and were met by two volunteers – I was so bummed the battery on my camera ran out, because we’d stacked the four suitcases on a cart and then Terry perched the kids on top of the stack of suitcases and they were just too cute sitting there riding backwards.

Friday we all went to the office together for a celebratory lunch – cookout on the roof (including an AMAZING quinoa salad and fresh-squeezed guava juice). The office occupies most of a four-story building, an old home not too far from where we live. We got to meet the MCCers who are based in Bogotá although I’m still putting together names, faces, and service assignments. After lunch we had a short meeting during which both kids fell asleep on my lap… fortunately we were able to transfer them to a bed upstairs (there are two guest rooms here for out-of-town service workers who are passing through the capital). We also met the very sweet woman who will be providing us childcare.

Saturday we puttered around the house sorting ourselves out, went to the playground, and had lunch at the home of the MCCer who has been our primary guide, and her hostess/housemate, an older Colombian woman affiliated with the Mennonite church. More amazing food (potato soup with capers, cream, and shredded chicken; fresh-squeezed passion fruit juice) and great conversation.

Today (Sunday) we went to the Mennonite church that Terry and I had visited in 2007; it was nice to be in a familiar-ish place even though I didn't really know anybody. People kept coming up to Terry and commenting on how much he looks like Vern :-).

I have to say that it’s SOOOOOO NICE to be fluent in the language. There are a few differences in accent and vocabulary but wow. I can just, like talk to people. Terry still tends to default to Albanian so I have to translate for him sometimes. The kids are very receptive to learning new words in Spanish, so I hope that comes along quickly for them. 

Valerie has been talking a lot about Tirana but overall the kids both are doing really well. Of course when they get tired or hungry they get a little fragile, but for the most part they seem to be having a lot of fun. I think they’re really enjoying getting so much time and attention with Daddy.

We have internet at our apartment but it’s super-slow and not very reliable… so that’s mostly why it took me so long to post anything here. We’re going to get a different kind of connection… eventually… so hopefully I’ll be able to blog more often before too long.

I have tons of great photos to post from our time in the US, too! Little by little...

A.M.

 Some mornings when Gabe and I wake up long before everybody else (not, obviously, when Terry is out of town as he is now) I take him out so his morning exuberance won't wake them up. We go down to the street, buy some bread or byrek (phyllo dough stuffed with cheese and/or spinach, onions, tomato, etc.) and then go to a cafe where we can eat and I can get some coffee.

He likes to help me put sugar in my macchiato, and then spoon up the foam and put it in my mouth - or sometimes his own! I think in these photos he was pouring the coffee dregs into the cup of cold water that you normally get along with your coffee.

We usually make a mess. Which is why we are big tippers!

Little bits

Christmas is coming! For some reason, whenever Gabriel sees this billboard, he mimes playing the piano and says "la la la." I have no idea why. The family in the apartment above us has a piano and we often hear the kids practicing, but he's never actually seen them. We showed him pictures of pianos and tried to make the connection but I'm not sure what he's actually imagining when he hears the music and imitates our miming.

I trimmed about an inch off the back of Valerie's hair, and it looks much better - cleaner and healthier. I'd never, ever cut that part before and it was all uneven. I like the change. She was good about letting me do it, too.

Thanksgiving is coming! This is the closest we got to a Halloween costume. Then I sat on the "hat" and it broke. I've been enjoying cooking pumpkins and squash while they last though. Amazingly, we can get cranberries here so I'm hoping to do a Thanksgiving meal with some American friends next week.

A couple days ago Valerie has a very first-Thanksgiving-ish lunch - popcorn, roasted chestnuts, and an apple. She's become a very picky eater this year, but I think it's just a stage, since she was not picky at all until recently. I try to feed her a wide variety of fruits and nuts since she refuses most vegetables now (even tomatoes, which she used to love). Apples, tangerines, figs, plums, grapes, dried blueberries, dried cranberries... hopefully she's still getting some vitamins. If I mix real vegetable broth in with her alphabet soup, she'll eat that (but not if she can visually identify an actual vegetable) and she also likes beans still (but not rice). She drinks like 4-5 or more glasses of milk every day.

Gabriel has been having terrible teething pain. All four eye teeth are coming in at the same time and taking a long time about it as well. He seems to take teething pain much harder than Valerie did. Poor little guy.

Today I ordered what I thought was a hot chocolate at the cafe where I'm working, and I got a cup of steaming hot chocolate pudding! With two sugar packets (which I did not use). I'm trying to cut back on coffee, though I don't suppose this was the most frugal substitute.

It's getting cold here.

Food for thought

I’m not really into cooking. I’m not a bad cook; I don’t hate it; it just usually feels like cooking requires more planning, attention, and focus than I have at my disposal (or want to give to it) at the moment. But all of a sudden here, I’m cooking nearly every day. What happened?

Gabriel turned one, first of all. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that for the first few months of his life, cooking a meal felt like a task of monumental proportions. Hence, lots of Red Front BBQ chicken before we moved, and lots of pizza after. Earlier this year I looked up instructions for how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, making them for the first time in my life. I tried making pancakes from memory (a miserable failure) – keeping track of more than two or three ingredients seemed like an insurmountable undertaking. However, for Gabriel’s birthday, I really really really wanted to make a carrot cake. The only cake pan we have is for making baklava, but we do have a muffin tin, so I decided to make carrot cake muffins.

They came out awesome.

It felt like a huge, time-consuming project that day, but at the same time I also found myself thinking, “this isn’t, actually, impossible.”

So I started making cornmeal muffins with Valerie on a regular basis. And then I found a recipe for grilled eggplant in a Reader’s Digest, and as I read through it I thought, “I have all the ingredients right here” – all I had to buy were eggplants (of course) and parsley, which were in season and available practically at my front door.

So I tried the recipe, and it was really good! Not only that but it looked and tasted gourmet. And I could make it while the kids played in the living room behind me.

That alone has been a huge factor – that the kids can play behind me in the living room while I chop and stir, and I don’t have to try to do everything with Gabriel in the sling and Valerie wanting constant attention.

Then when my in-laws came to visit in September, I had added incentive to plan and cook interesting meals. One thing they brought for me, at my request, was a copy of Simply In Season, a great produce-based cookbook that emphasizes eating locally-produced fresh fruits and vegetables, which, as I’ve mentioned we have in great bounty and conveniently located here.

One of my favorite recipes from that book is Groundnut Stew, which I’ve adapted made a couple times now with pumpkin. I’ve also made pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pancakes, and some different kinds of stew. Last week I made purple cabbage stir-fry. I did buy some imported black beans (which we all seem to prefer to the pinto and white beans that are more common here) and garnished them with cilantro I grew from seeds my sister bought – but at least I did throw in local onions, garlic, carrots, and red peppers.

Anyway, it feels like the same impulse to share pictures of my knitting online (hey, everybody, look what I made!) impels me now to share pictures of food online – not as cute as my kids (again, hey! Look what I made!) but fun anyway.

Cute babies

Remember those frozen blueberries I scored? We've been making muffins. Lots and lots of muffins. Also, blackberries are in season. So, more muffins. Yum.

buy local

Our street is lined with empty storefronts interspersed with small mom-and-pops. In the space of one block, there are two seamstresses, two small groceries, two fruit-and-vegetable marts, a butcher’s shop, an internet café, two regular cafes, two clothing shops, a used-clothing store, and a “dyqan ndryshme” – I suppose you’d call it a variety store? They sell laundry baskets, mops, plastic tubs, house slippers, clocks, knick-knacks, hair accessories, makeup, mirrors, sewing thread, scissors… it’s our own little micro-Wal-Mart. It’s easy to run down and buy a quart of milk or a bag of çubuk, or any of those random little things you need but don’t want to make a long trip for.

Here’s my problem – the food stuff, it isn’t always fresh. Every time I’ve bought produce, dairy, or meat, I’ve been disappointed. The rope of onions I bought one day all had rotten centers. The plums and nectarines grew mold overnight. The chicken breasts and ground beef sat in my fridge for just one day before I put them in the freezer, and upon thawing smelled bad and I had to throw them out.

And I feel bad, because I walk past the empty storefronts with big “FOR RENT OR SALE” signs in our building, and I don’t want these other shops to close for lack of business. But slow business is the reason their stuff goes bad – they probably buy the cheap, low-quality stuff to begin with, and then it sits too long because the turnover isn’t fast enough. So I feel like by not shopping there I’m contributing to the problem. But I can’t feed my family tainted meat or rotten fruit. So… I go around the corner to the nicer shops on the main avenue. And feel guilty walking past the local guy.

(Although I guess as long as I can avoid the Italian chain grocery store I’m still more or less ok.)

food and foreigners

Continuing the discussion on expatriates and food... bear with me as I get a wee bit political. I've heard many people in the US criticize immigrants for failing to assimilate quickly, for clinging too long or too strongly to the language, customs, and foods of their country of origin. But the vast majority of Americans I've met living overseas do the same thing, to some degree or another. Familiar food is incredibly comforting when you're homesick. I remember a group of our cross-cultural students in Peru making a bee-line to the MacDonald's they found in Lima, bypassing the local sandwich shops. And although some expats do "go native" and take pride in enjoying the local cuisine, the reason they take such pride in this ability or preference has a lot to do with (in my opinion) that it's NOT the norm. In fact, when an expat does "go native" too deeply they often become subject to criticism from other expats. (Side note: why are immigrants in the US never called "expats"? Even those who are only coming temporarily to work, which is what we're doing here in Albania? Something to think about. I think it has a lot to do with power, privilege and class. But I digress. Sort of.) Anyway, it's just a bit of a pet peeve of mine and I'm a bit bemused by my own current fixation on oatmeal and Cheerios.

Did I mention that I spent $10 on two lbs. of frozen blueberries today? You can't get blueberries in the shops here, but apparently they do grow wild in the mountains near Tirana, and a woman picks them and sells them to American missionaries. I can't tell you how excited Valerie was to get them. She's been talking about blueberry muffins for ages (prompted, I believe, by a Strawberry Shortcake coloring book she has) and I told her Grammy can bring some dried blueberries from the States. We made some delicious blackberry muffins today (those grow all over the place here and showed up fresh in the markets a couple weeks ago), and tomorrow we'll make blueberry muffins. Right now both kids have purple-stained lips and fingers. And I feel silly for buying them, but... I really wanted them!

Ah, expat dilemmas.

Food

A couple weekends ago, we took a long, hot, uphill trek to America's Favorites food store, an income-generation project by a missionary couple who also run their own printing business here on the outskirts of Tirana. I was looking for oatmeal and mac-and-cheese, but also interested in seeing what else they might have that I would like to get but isn't available here. They were out of mac-and-cheese but I scored some delicious 5-minute oatmeal which I used the last of today - I'm going to have to go back sometime this week and get more, because the kids love it too. People here don't eat oatmeal because it's considered horse food. Imagine if someone told you they like alfalfa for breakfast!

I also bought a big bottle of vanilla flavoring, and double-strength baking powder, because in the grocery stores here I've only seen baking soda (not powder) and the vanilla flavoring is in tiny little ampules and doesn't even really taste like vanilla.

I also bought a huge box of Cheerios for about 8 US$... a quick google search suggests that the same size box would probably retail for about $3 in the US. So, expensive Cheerios. And even though we have a handy little snack cup with a lid that reduces spills... well, reduces isn't the same as eliminates, and I was suddenly remembering the thick Cheerio carpet that ossified on the floor of our car and under V's carseat in the States. So I've been a little obsessive-compulsive following the kids around picking up Cheerios as they drop them, and depending on the relative cleanliness of the surface they fell on, either putting them back in the cup or eating them myself. They're just such a handy, easy, perfect toddler snack, and the honey-nut variety you can get here just aren't the same - a lot more sugar, for one thing, and also harder to chew for some reason.

So, all this to say that when I came across this blog post from "Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like," I just had to laugh at myself: "Expat aid workers like food. More specifically, they like talking about all the trouble they go through to get it. Items that had very little value in their pre-EAW life now get elevated to the same level of importance as, for example, oxygen. Get a few EAWs together and sooner or later the conversation will migrate to cereal."

Touché, mon ami; touché.

Proof of my domesticity

I made carrot cake cupcakes for Gabriel's birthday!

(That little yellow vial is vanilla flavoring)

Normally I never make anything that requires a recipe - cause I'm just too lazy to read directions (this does not apply to knitting patterns, so apparently it's laziness, not inability).

So I just grabbed the first recipe that came up on google when I put in a search for "carrot cake cupcakes"

Cream cheese frosting! It was really runny, but tasted yummy.

He wasn't sure about this new taste... (but Valerie loved them!)

And another time, I made fruit salad.

Early Thanksgiving

We had a really fun evening tonight with Phil and Mel, two of Terry's coworkers who arrived in Albania about a month after we did. Also present for the festivities was Kristela, an Albanian coworker who lived in the US for 5 years and was waxing nostalgic for an American holiday.

Phil and Mel (I got the impression it was mostly Mel!) knocked themselves out with some fantastic holiday fare including candied nuts, a ball of goat cheese encrusted with cranberries and more nuts, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, baklava, pumpkin pie, carrots stewed in the turkey broth, gravy, and of course turkey. Christmas music played in the background and after eating we watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special. Valerie liked watching Snoopy clown around with Woodstock, but was VERY VERY UPSET when Lucy pulled the football away from Charlie Brown.

I didn't really grow up with Thanksgiving being a big part of our family life but it was still fun to hang out and eat good food and participate in a long-standing expat tradition - recreating Thanksgiving overseas.

Phil very kindly took this picture of the four of us, a rarity!