Almost a Month Now

I truly enjoy being home just as much as I truly miss South Africa and all my wonderful friends there.  I also miss the freedom I had there.  If I needed to run an errand I could hop in my car and get it.  Now I have to ask one of my parents to take me places, on their schedule (as I am not on their car insurance).

I am job searching, temporary job searching, I still really want to get back to South Africa in the next few months if the Lord wills.  No leads so far.  I did work one day at a gun show with dad and a friend and a bit of work for my parents’ business, but nothing consistent.  Even the temp agencies are just taking numbers, because there are so many people being laid off all the time with higher qualifications and experience than me taking over what few jobs remain.

I am hopeful though.  Besides this week I have been too sick with flu, on top of my nearly month long cold, to do much.  I am really trying to get better though so I can attend our Youth Winter Camp as a leader from tomorrow to Sunday.

But here’s a bit of what I’ve been doing this month…lots of pictures following…

Snow and lots of it for two weeks!

 

Being beat by Mom at Monopoly.  Seriously, she beat the entire family, this has never happened for her-even since childhood.  All that property, yeah–that’s hers!

 

And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care…and a good old fashioned Christmas movie was playing on the big screen!

  

Chili Cheese Dogs with Mustard on top and American Doritos on the side.  Yum yum yum yum.  How I’ve missed thee.

Sisters, sisters, there was never such a set of sisters…(from aforementioned, but not named good old fashioned Christmas movie, and loosely adapted).  If this photo was on facebook I would also tag the phone as Middle Sister’s Boyfriend.  And footie pajamas?  She’s 12 years younger but only 4 or 5 inches shorter than me and she can still find footie pajamas. 

Helping with friends to set up for best Seattle friend’s wedding.  This photo is of Middle Sister’s best friend of two and my best Seattle friend’s Mom.

This is my Middle Sister’s boyfriend, Nik.  Remember the picture with the phone up above, this is the guy she spends a day with and then two hours at night talking about their day together.  Young love, who gets it really?  I just love this picture because he was helping set up for the wedding and was asked to cut off extra threads on the table runners, but with his look of sincere concentration, it appears as though he could be tailoring pants for Elvis or something.

Best Friend’s Wedding!  I love this shot because it looks like Pastor Mark is singing a Christmas carol to them.

And guess who caught the bouquet…Moi!  Ha, it was pretty funny-for once I really didn’t try.  Actually had to lift my hands from my sides and catch it, to make sure it didn’t fall to the ground.  Later on, a few complained that the bride had purposefully thrown it exactly to me.  Maybe its just fate…ha.

And just because I like these pictures and don’t want to leave Dad out…Dad and youngest sister in the snow.  Shortly after this one they started clearing off the snow on Risa’s car (Pastor Mark’s wife who works for my parents’ business) to make snowballs and help her get home without too much work.

I hope your holidays were wonderful!

I Swear I Am Still Alive…

and doing beautifully other than bemoaning the fact that I only have two weeks left.

Honestly, I miss you and my family and American junk food.  But I could give up most of the normal American lifestyle to stay here longer.  And I say this with exactly two weeks left today.

Because remember how lonely I was for a while?  And how I didn’t feel satisfied with the experience I had waited nearly 6 years for?

That changed once the Lord put friend after friend in my life.

And last Thursday I had a Thanksgiving dinner.  I was the only American, the only one with previous Thanksgiving holiday experience.  And I invited probably around 50 people because as people backed out for various reasons, I just kept inviting others.

In the end, 16 of my closest friends came and it was lovely lovely lovely.

It really was a room full of my family, the family I made here in South Africa.  The people I want to live amongst for another 6-9 months plus if the Lord wills next year.

And there were these moments, as we shared what we were thankful for and as I observed my diverse friends meet and greet and become new friends, that just touched my soul with permanent memories.  Fully satisfied memories, not one bit lonely.

Once they all went home for the night, I nearly cried with gratitude, with thanks.

So this year:

I am thankful for my return to South Africa.  I did the math and realized I waited exactly five years and 360 days to return to this beautiful nation.  And it has been a wonderful wonderful challenging experience.

I experienced some of my loneliest times but over the weeks and months the Lord placed exactly the right people at the right time in my path.  And the Thanksgiving party was just a culmination and a beginning of sorts.  I could look around the room and see how blessed I had been by these people: black, white, colored, Indian, it doesn’t matter what race-it’s the love thhat matters.  Blessed by their friendship, by their decision to walk along the path of life with me for a few months.

And I didn’t even have to do dishes…

In Need of Time Consumers

First go here and read this wonderful post about television by FrugalGranola…

I responded to her thoughts with this comment:  I am currently in an internship in South Africa. I am living across the world from friends and family and now living alone. I turn on my television all the time for sound in the house and for entertainment because I have nothing else to do. I spend my free time at home watching tv, cooking and baking, and reading books. I don’t plan to always have a tv or cable when I have my own family but for now it fills some gaps. If you have any other ideas for how to spend my free time at home (I do leave the house and visit museums, go to concerts, etc too) please let me know. I am looking for other or new hobbies.

And now I leave it up to you folks, dearest readers, to help me out with ideas too.

Because really I spend my time working, cooking/baking-lots and lots of time, effort, energy, and thoughts, reading any novels I can get my hands on, and watching tv or movies.

And please understand, I love reading, I love cooking/baking (though I prefer to do it for others), I love movies and I enjoy working and watching tv.  I don’t do these things just because I can-but because I do like all these activities.

But they are not filling all my time.  So now I am playing computer card games: solitaire, spider solitaire, freecell, and hearts over and over again.  And the boredom, loneliness, etc is not satisfying by any means.

I knew to expect some of this but goodness gracious, I’ve had enough.  I do get out and do nice and usually free activities in the area.  And I do go to a nice church and have a lovely bible study group.  But I need more.

So what do you think?  Any hobbies, activities that have struck you as a Jennifer would love this! sort of time spender?  What do you do for fun, in your free time, for yourself/for others, etc, etc, etc?

Notes: I am only here for 2.5 more months.  I cannot garden (though I would love to do so one day).  I am not naturally crafty and really have no interest in needlepoint or scrapbooking to name a few.  Those are enough direction pointers for now, I hope.

I tried to make this beautiful cake…

remember that lovely chocolate peanut butter cake which is Smitten Kitchen’s most popular recipe?

Go here to look at her beautiful beautiful cake before reading further.

I mean really her cake makes me want to sing and eat and eat some more.  I love me some chocolate and peanut butter.  I also have hungry eyes..are you singing yet?

So I pulled the ingredients together over a month’s time buying what I could find or pay for week by week.

And I made the cake- the chocolate sour cream, peanut butter cream cheese, chocolate ganache-y cake.

At first it seemed to go well.  My brand new soft silicone  baking pans worked very well.  And all smelled well and looked well…

Good so Far

 

Third Layer

A little bit of crumbly pieces but I thought I was ready for the crumb layer.  You know the thin layer of frosting that catches the crumbs and looks terrible but then you cover up with the real layer that looks lovely like Smitten Kitchen’s very own version.

But then the crumb layer didn’t come together.  I don’t know if the peanut butter frosting was too sticky or my cake was too warm or I wasn’t patient enough.  It was probably all three.  But instead of panicking or even getting ready to lose everything like Laura Brown from Michael Cunningham’s fantastic book, The Hours who contemplated suicide after making a not so beautiful cake, I just let it be.

Be.  Be what it was going to be. 

Be This…

And here’s another view in case you missed it…

Houston, we have a problem.  It looks like I smeared the frosting on with a four year old boy with ADHD’s help.  But no, I used a knife.  And the above is what happened.

So I went ahead with it.  Time for the ganache.  Excited yet?

Which was a bit too runny or hot or whatever and went everywhere, even here…

After all my hard hard time consuming work I had to try some.  And then I decided I should hold some aside for my co-workers to try too.  So I cut off half the cake and put the now falling apart chunks into separate containers where they looked like something absolutely disgusting.

And then, not having spare room in my fridge or a nice cake holder I left the rest out on the counter.

Only to wake up to this the next morning…

And see the leaning tower of peanut butter.  I have titled that last one: Triumph of the Cake Over the Cook.

But, as crappy as this cake looks (and I do mean that literally) it was one of the most delicious things I have baked in at least five years.

Do Not Be Easily Offended or Shocked…

*Status: I have condom lubricant on my fingertips, but no, I have not been having sex.  I have been attending a Channels of Hope training which is a motivational workshop for church/religious leaders about HIV & AIDS for the past two days and we learned how to properly apply condoms on our own fingers today.  I will not tell you any more about it until tomorrow once I have completed the entire workshop.

Instead I will write a light post about guacamole and tortilla chips and despair and ultimately happiness. 

Once upon a time in Africa, I bought some avocados in the hopes of making tasty guacamole and partaking with tortilla chips as we did once at Joanne’s sixteenth birthday.

But the avos (as they are called here) that I bought were not ripe.  So on remembering an old wives’ tale I put them in a paper bag in a cool dark dry place.  After a week they still weren’t ripe.  After a week and a half I sought out some avo farming friends who told me that I should wrap them in clothes.  Being too busy even to wrap a t-shirt around my avos I just let them go a few more days in the paper bag.  When…

Finally! Two weeks later. Let the chips and guacamole-ing commence!

 Now during this long wait I had already gone and picked up chips so I could be ready the minute the avos were ripe.  I struggled to find tortilla chips from the store but finally found something that looked and felt right.  They said maize (check) and baked not fried (healthy so check).  As you can see…

 

You can

 NOT actually see the chips through the bag.  But after a squeeze test I went ahead and bought them.

Immediately after finding the avos were ripe and letting out a wild cry of joy (thankfully one the neighbor didn’t hear and come running at) I rushed to open the bag of invisible chips.  When I did, I saw THIS…

Yes THIS!!! Not tortilla chips!

This was a travesty.  I let out a primal yell of terror and anger that was much louder than my earlier cry of joy (but again the neighbor didn’t come running in fear for my life-we must have nice thick walls here).  Not only were they not corn chips, they were cheese puffs which I usually only eat with three year olds I am babysitting or when I’m starving.

It was already 6:30 that night.  I thought I had approximately thirty minutes including travel time to get myself some tortilla chips or my life would be doomed.  I was desperate, I had waited so long for that guacamole and nothing was going to get in my way!  I frantically searched my mind for the best store to run to in search of corn chips.

I decided to dash off to the mall in search of tortilla chips only to arrive to find all the stores had closed early that night!  Argh again!

In a last chance effort I decided to run to a petrol station to try my luck.  In the end, all I found and all I had to make due with were personal sized bags of oddly flavored Doritos.

 

Weird Doritos

Which were only this small.

But they were loads better than those Cheese Puffs.

So they sufficed.  I made it through the night and had some fantastic guacamole with some oddly sized and even more oddly flavored little tortilla chips.

Just a few short days later I went back to the mall after doing some research and found the only brand of plain normally-sized tortilla chips probably in the entire country.  And then promptly made some more guacamole.  The chips were a bit thicker than the ones back in the states, but they more than sufficed compared to cheese puffs and weirdly flavored mini-Doritos.

So I lived happily and continue to do so even yet.

The End.

I Love Cooking…

I am filling out medical school applications this weekend and one of them asks how I have spent my extracurricular time since starting college.  I wrote down: Cooking.  And I told them I spend 15-20 hours a week on average doing it. 

Here, especially, I seem to be thinking about food and cooking constantly.  All day at work, all night at home, all morning.  These days I am working on my egg preparations.  Before this year I could only boil or scramble, now with a good pan I can make a nice omelette or fry up some eggs JDE style.  I am currently working on my poaching techniques which is proving difficult with no extra Rand for vinegar until the next paycheck comes.

Lacking the paycheck thus far pushes me to be creative with my cooking which I actually love to do.  I used to walk into Townhouse 255A and ask them what they had in their cupboards.  Upon receiving answers I would finagle a dinner for all of us!  Those were the days.

Tonight I found myself with plenty of rice, ground beef, and eggs.  Upon some quick kraftfoods searching I decided to whip up some meatballs using the remnants of a strange cheese my roommate bought but didn’t like whatsoever.  Yum.  Please check out this website, once I shared it with Glenda and she was overjoyed, you will be too.  You can plug in up to three ingredients you have on hand and they will put out recipes that use those ingredients.

Some other websites about food I check constantly or am backtracking through:

http://101cookbooks.com/ She reviews recipes as she goes through giving tips and overall thoughts.

SmittenKitchen is a fantastic website but I am going to purposefully direct you to this recipe first… http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/08/chocolate-peanut-butter-cake/  I hope this will be my next big baking experience.  But I need a paycheck before I can buy sour cream & vinegar and I want to ponder how to substitute for corn syrup which doesn’t exist here.  I am debating between honey or a simple syrup (homemade).  I also don’t have round cake pans here, which means it will not look close to as good as those photos.

http://damngoodfood.blogspot.com This doctor knows good food and has an adventurous palate trying Turkish, Indian, Dutch, etc recipes all the time!

This is not a food blog, it’s an article about a man who foraged for his food for ten weeks.  I found it through 101cookbooks I think and I find it fascinating.  I think about food as much as he does it seems and I’m not even climbing trees to get it: http://www.egullet.org/tdg.cgi?pg=ARTICLE-blandfigs

And finally, I will conclude with a list I  just posted and have now edited in the comments section of my friend & penpal’s blog concerning kitchen utensils/gadgets.

Things I have here in Africa and love:
Decent knife, colander, citrus juicer, cheese slicer, biscuit cutter, cheese grater.  (The last four of which I purposefully brought with me to Africa.)
Things I used to have and miss: Crockpot, big cutting boards, muffin tins, bread pans, brush, rolling pin (I used my Nalgene to roll out pseudo-Cinnamon Rolls today), MagicBullet & Ulu (I still own but it is in the states, thousands of miles from me).
Things I have never had but want:
Ice Cream Maker, Food Processer, Round Cake Pans, Juicer, and last but certainly not least a Kitchen Aid Mixer (it is my goal to get or be given one of these before I get married [if marriage is in the works God]; I don’t want to wait until a husband comes around to get one of the best kitchen tools known to man.  So if you know me and love me maybe ya’ll can chip in…I will be home for Christmas).

So now you know.  I’m kind of obsessed with food.  I even had some quick thoughts this week that maybe I will spend my currently empty January-July in cooking school.  But that wouldn’t be public health/med school related so probably not. 

Now it’s your turn.  Any favorite recipes, food blogs, food photographers?  What kind of kitchen gadgets do you have and love, have and never use, crave to own?  Talk to me.  We’ll act like we have a giant dining room table between us and the candles are still flickering after we’ve filled our bellies on good good food.  Now is the time to talk and share.

Let’s go fly a kite after the braai tonight!

I love kite flying.  I have an exceptionally good kite that I fly as often as possible or at least as often as I remember I own it & the weather is right.  Which truth be told, is not often enough.

But braai-ing, ooo I will make every attempt to do this enough while here.  Whether I have a grill or not, which I don’t-I will fight for as many braais as possible.

Remember I told you a day or two ago, a braii is a barbecue here in Southern Africa.

I had one six years ago in Cape Town and one this past Saturday in Botswana.

Yum yum yum yum yum yum yum.  My hosts bought so much meat for it to cover all the guests that were coming.  But sadly they didn’t all come, one group even hit a cow and totaled the car on the way to the braai.  They were all fine, thank God, but the cow and the car were no more.

But the absence of many of the intendeds meant that those who were there ate meat upon meat upon meat.  We grilled until 11 at night and had started around 5.  And then we woke up and ate some more meat.

You see Southern Africa is one big meat-loving village.  I was told that everyone who can afford it eats as much meat as possible.  And those who can’t afford it eat meat at the weddings, funerals, and baby showers they are invited to multiple times a week.

I feel deep sorrow for anyone who is a vegetarian.  I like the environment and eating well too, but let me tell you, my environment and I–we get along fine, even better when I am eating organic free-range meat that tastes as heavenly as this did.  Ambrosia maybe, not that whipped cream salad, but true nectar of the gods. 

These steaks = Ambrosia.

Our host/guest of honor for the evening.

My first plate. Maize, meat, coleslaw, salad, sprouts.

Lesego using the itty-bitty grill.

Nice warm coals lonely without meat to cook.

Organic Free-Range Beef!

A satisfied meat eater!

I blog about food a lot, so here’s a little more…

What I’ve been eating recently:

Sushi Platter for Three!

I “accidentally” drove all the way to Pretoria and all I got was this awesome McD’s hamburger and mini cup of corn?! Sweet. More details tomorrow.

Raw Boervoers sausage: an Afrikaaner sausage packed with fat and flavor

Cooked Boervoers sausage–much smaller now that the fat has been cooked out and drained.

Two Lunches Worth from Fruit and Veg: Chicken, mac and cheese?, and sauteed mushrooms.

Spin-off of Rachel Ray’s Spaghetti alla Ceci-Recipe Coming!

Mint Aero Bar. I have waited six long years to be reunited with you! And oh, it was worth the wait.

Typical Winter SA WV lunch. Toast spread with avocado and sprinkled with salt plus random fruit on the side.

Dutch Apple Baby-Recipe Coming!

Remnants of Sushi Platter for Three-Hungry Yet?

Thus, I am not starving here in Africa. 

And I did not eat the Boerwoers raw, I’m just showing them to you.

P.S.  Don’t forget to submit questions for our upcoming Q & A time.  Even if they seem silly or dumb or just plain crazy.  I like questions.  I like comments.  I like you.