Sad and HAPPY...Birthday Time!!

The day after Kylie took her graduation photos, our landlord told Doug that we needed to move.  

He wanted to sell the house so that he could have money for his son who was getting married.  Selling the house would help them pay the bride price and get the new couple started in life.

Doug tried to convince him it would be hard to sell, and that if we kept paying rent, at least he would have some income.  No go.

On a side note, I'm writing this blog on April 7, 2021, and he STILL hasn't sold the house.  I was just over there last week!

The news about moving was also the same time that our language helper's mother died, so we went to her funeral. Death is an especially sad thing here for me. 

But a happy thing is celebrating one of our children's birthdays, and at the end of that sad week, we got to celebrate Karis turning 16!

She woke up to art that Kylie and I had made her for her room.  Knowing that after Kylie left for college, Karis would have her own room for the first time in her life, we wanted her to have pictures for her walls of things that she loved.

Kylie also designed a special piece for Karis, printed it, and had it framed.

Since Karis is lactose intolerant, the best cookie cake for her was a tahin cookie.

Tahin is made from ground up sesame seeds, and for some reason, it tastes better over here than the jars you can buy in the grocery store in America.  Kylie and Karis have perfected tahin cookies over the last couple of years, and this just happened to be a giant one.

Karis is a lot of fun to be around.  She keeps people laughing and has a great sense of humor.

She is so smart and works hard at everything she does. She is dedicated, independent, a very loyal friend.

As I write this, she only has one more year at home, so I'm trying to take advantage of the time I have left.

Happy birthday, Karis!

The DAY AFTER these pictures were taken, we had to go into a 72 mandatory lockdown.

It was the end of Ramadan, and numbers were rising. 

We had a graduation party planned for Kylie that was supposed to take place in 6 days, so we held our breath!

French Cuisine

The French teacher contacted all the parents and asked if we could help her on a "cooking day" with the kids. Another lady and I responded that we could.

She told us to come at the beginning of the day and just wait for the morning lessons to be over, and then we would all walk to the cafeteria to "cook."  

I don't speak French, but the other mother does.

The teacher wrote the recipe on the board in French and all the students had to copy it down and recite it a few times.

Next she started writing something, and I saw the words "Keira" and "maman," and I got a little nervous.

The next thing I know, the kids are grinning, looking at us, and then they start working.

And then they start showing the teacher what they have drawn.

I couldn't type the words into google translate at the time because I was trying to be engaged, but later at home, I was able to use my app to translate what it said:

Keira's mom and Aryana's mom are in the class.  They are seated on small chairs. They eat a cake.  They cat is under the table.



It wasn't quite like sitting for a portrait painting, but it was a little intimidating to have 23 second graders drawing pictures of you :)

The teacher paired up the students and gave each table of four a bowl and a wooden spoon.

Everything was in French, but at one point the teacher told me in broken English, "These kids have never been in the kitchen before.  They don't know how to mix, get their hands dirty, cut, or cook.  This is a shame!"

I'd say they picked it up rather quickly.

I would go to each table to help them finish rolling out the dough or add more flour or whatever they needed.

Most of the time, I spent peeling apples for the kids, so they could cut them into small pieces. They really liked the cutting part, but there were only a couple of knives per table, so the cutting took a long time. Plus, some of these kids really had never used a knife before, so it went really slowly.

November 13, 2019

I'm really not sure what they ended up making :)

They filled the dough pan with apples, and that was it.  No topping, no sugar, no cinnamon.  They just went out to recess while I cleaned up.

Later, Keira said the teacher baked them in the school ovens, but before cooking, she added a coin to each one.  

All I know is that Keira didn't like it, so I guess we won't be recreating it at home ;)

Syrian Cooking Class

My friend and I saw a cooking class advertised on Facebook.  It was to help a Syrian refugee woman earn some money for her family.  I thought there were be more cooking involved, but it ended up being a lot of watching, a little helping, and a lot of eating, and I was okay with all of that.

I have had this dish before in a restaurant, but I didn't know how to make it until now.  

I also didn't know that it's made with uncooked meat!

I'm not sure I'll be eating this again anytime soon.

Then we all sat down (after a four hour experience)!

February 2, 2019

Oven and Pork (Shhh!)

My oven stopped working on February 23rd, and after a week at the shop, we called and found out they were waiting for a part from a neighboring country.

Not good.


Even though two people offered me extra ovens they keep on their porches, I kept thinking, "Surely it will be here any day now."

But no.

For the second half of the week that the stove/oven was in the shop, a friend let us borrow this propane stove to at least heat up food and water.

It was a life-saver.

The drama continued the whole month of March.  

We would get excited about making cookies for an event.  We'd make the batter, and right as we were getting ready to preheat the oven...we'd remember and have to go to a neighbors.

We had leftover pizza to heat up...we'd remember and have to re-heat it in a pan.

I bought 85 tomatoes, 10, onions, 35 peppers, and several cloves of garlic to make salsa.  I cleaned, cut, and blended veggies for about an hour, and when I started thinking about the sealing process in the oven...I remembered.

It took 12 trips, back and forth to my neighbors to get all my jars sealed.

So, when it was time to can pickles, I just asked my teammate across town if I could bring all my stuff to her house and work there for an afternoon.

Then, Doug took a translator with him to the shop last week to get his point across as strong as he could.  Interestingly enough, they said they would have the part the next day, and he could bring it in then. 

Doug's theory (which is probably correct) is that without a computer system (or any kind of system), a part comes in and they have no record or memory of who needed that part, so it just sits there.

The next morning, we got a phone call during language asking why we hadn't brought our oven in early.  Now, we would have to wait because others were in front of us.  

Through our language helper, Doug communicated that we had been "in line" for a month.  They quickly recanted, and then they asked if the oven was in warranty.  Doug communicated that the oven was in warranty when we brought it in in February, but now it was not. 

When Doug went to pick it up on Thursday, April 5th, after one night in the shop, we were not asked to pay a dime (if they had those in this country).

By the way, have I ever told you there are no coins here.

No pork either.

That's why Kylie's and Karis' dance teacher made our day when she told us she had "connections" and could get us pork.

She pulled up to the curb outside our house and opened her trunk.  In an ice chest in the back, we saw treasures of bacon, ham, and pork loin.

I bought a lot of it; however, I must admit it felt a little like a drug deal going down (not that I really know how that feels), but you know....

And now that I have an oven, we can finally try the pork loin (because we've definitely already tried the bacon and ham)!  The bacon is not as good as the stuff Doug's dad makes for us when we visit, but I'll take it over "nothing" anyday.

Worth every penny (or dime)!

Date Cookie

I think one of the favorite desserts around here is a special cookie made with mashed dates rolled inside.

An American friend of mine was learning how to make them from her neighbor, and she invited me to come.  I was a little late because I had language class, but I got in on most of it.

My friend mashed the dates flat on the plastic with oil on her fingers so that they wouldn't stick to her.

Her neighbor rolled the dough out on a tri-legged wooden table.  

Most ladies use this small table for either rolling dough or cutting veggies or meat since most of ladies cook on the floor.  It's quite handy.

After rolling the dates in the dough, she would cut little slits in the top for the classic look that you can see in the pan above.

When the pan was full (and this was just pan one of two and a half), the neighbor brushed them with raw egg before we baked them.

Making them was quite time-consuming, and I will certainly appreciate them more when I am offered them next time.

We ran out of dates before the dough ran out, so on our third batch, we made half a pan of just "cookies."

To be honest, these were never my favorite thing to eat when I visited homes, but after making them, I'm endeared to them a little more.























































I kind of look forward to the next time I get to try them, and guess what?

Newroz is right around the corner.  Remember that?

Learning to cook "Womans' Food"

It seems that a main entree for many meals is a food called "dolma."  However, if you ask most men, they will say, "I don't like it.  It's woman's food."

I've seen men eating it, even gorging on it, but we know better than to call it anything except "woman's food."

We've had it several times.

It's been brought to our house by the neighbors, and we've had it at a couple of picnics.

It's the dish in the upper center, to the left of the meat and rice.  It is a seasoned rice (and sometimes meat) stuffed into various vegetables.

There is also white dolma and red dolma.  (You can see the difference below).  I prefer white, but that's just me.  I also prefer it stuffed in an onion skin or grape leaf.   The one thing I do not like about dolma is the large bean-type things they put in the pot with the dolma to cook.  You can see them on the tray below.

Ok, so back to this house where we stayed for 5 hours.

About 11, the ladies headed into the kitchen, and we asked if we could watch and learn to make dolma (at least I think that's what we said).

It started out simple enough.

Did I mention we cook on the floor?

The daughter in the background is making salad with white pomegranates and other wonderful things.  Later she poured a pomegranate syrup over it.  It was my favorite dish on the table!

Also, notice on the tray in front of me the insides of cucumbers.  One of the ladies let me try to scrape out the insides of a zucchini.  Let me just say it's harder than it sounds, and she had to "fix" mine after I tried.  The skin has to be pretty thin to stuff and cook properly.

The raw rice is mixed with tomato paste, parsley, a LOT of salt, a bitter/lemon salt which I don't have a translation for yet, some other spices, and oil.  Yes, that liquid you see is oil, not water!

She is scraping out the last tomatoes, and the tray is now full of all the things she will stuff with rice: grape leaves, onion skins, tomatoes, bell peppers, egg plants, and zucchini.

These are the bean-type things at the bottom that I don't like.  Of course, I may have discovered on this day that I was eating them wrong.

I was just "eating" them before, but on this day, I saw the ladies put one bean in their mouth and eat the inside of the bean and take the skin of the bean out of their mouth (kind of like you would eat a sunflower seed).

Maybe I'll try it one more time when given the chance.

This is the beginning of the grape leaf wraps.

Stuffed tomatoes are sitting upright in the pot, and she is stuffing one end of a zucchini and then closing the other end with another part of the vegetable like a puzzle.

I had never seen these long onions before in America.  The long shape definitely makes them easier to roll than a round onion.  You can also see the zucchini "puzzle" here.

The pot is getting full!

Finishing off all the grape leaves.

There is no more rice, so to help keep the heat in, she covered the top with the remaining grape leaves.

I didn't realize they had a couple of dishes already cooking, so I thought dolma and salad might be it.  But then the mom also brought in this very crispy, thin naan bread she had made.  It is so thin and fragile, that it breaks easily.

Not all women know how to make this, but it has a special quality.  It will last almost forever.

 When you are ready to eat it, you wet it by sprinkling a lot of water on it.  All of a sudden it is like a flour tortilla, bendable, and lunch-ready.

This lady took it outside to use the water on the porch.

Then, so it wouldn't be so damp, she covered it and put it in the sun for a bit.

I actually have some in my cabinet that I've had a while.

I don't ever wet it.

When I want something that kind of reminds me of a tortilla chip, I reach for a broken piece.

This particular naan has trouble holding salsa in big chunks, so I have to spoon a little on a little piece a little at a time.

But any way you can get salsa in your mouth is a good thing, right?

Chips and salsa are one of "this woman's" favorite foods.

Wanna cook right now??

The neighbors had told me they would teach me to cook some things; however, our cooking day was interrupted by a bazaar day.  When they found out that the girls and I needed material for new dresses, they quickly decided that we were cancelling cooking and going to the bazaar instead.  That story is coming, but for now, lets talk about cooking.

Karis was looking out the upstairs window, and she told me that the neighbor was saying something she couldn't understand.  I went down to see her.

I couldn't get most of the words, but the next thing I know, her 18 year old daughter was coming out of the gate with a bowl FULL of rice.  The mother was asking if four cups was okay.  I said, "Oh no!  Two cups are good."  She laughed and said, "No, five is good."  And she sent the daughter over.

Once in the kitchen, she asked for hot water.  We boiled some, and then she soaked the rice, although I did limit her to TWO cups.  Then she said something about "30 minutes," and she left.

Forty-five minutes later, the 18 year old returned with her mother, her sister-in-law, and another lady that lives in their home.

The mother sat on the carpet and started peeling and cutting vegetables that she brought, and her daughter-in-law took over the rice, draining it, and getting it ready to cook.

Apparently, my pots weren't the right size; I didn't have the correct rice drainer; my oil and salt weren't like the ones they were used to, but Kylie made a quick trip to the neighborhood grocery store and picked up a few needed things, and we were good to go.  (Note: By the way, I have since been to the market and gotten the right pots and rice drainer).

They got busy cooking, and I got busy writing down what everyone was doing and adding.

The mother told me the daughter-in-law didn't add enough salt to the rice, so it didn't taste right, but it was pretty good to me.  The mother also told the others in the room how I only wanted two cups of rice instead of four, and they all had a good laugh.

At the same time, while all the cooking was going on, three neighborhood girls were dressing up like princesses in the front room with Keira.  It was a busy, fun afternoon.  Kylie and I had learned most of our kitchen words by this time, so we actually understood a lot that was going on and could communicate a little on our own, and that made it even nicer.

All the visitors' shoes.