rosemary and thyme bread

I'm playing hooky today. I emailed out sick to my volunteer job early this morning, and I've had a couple of moments of chest-tightening guilt and anxiety about it, but I still don't regret it. Last week was a rough one, in which I cleaned up all of the things that can come out of a human; there were seizures and choking (I actually did ask, "ARE YOU CHOKING?"), and more unpleasantness, and uh, I had sort of a moment when I was like, "dudes...I'm not getting paid, so I'm getting out of here". It made me realize that I could never get paid to do this kind of work, because seriously, guys - how does a person clean up someone else's vomit without retching?  What if that vomit had turkey bones in it? (*shudder*) I do maintain that it's important - no, essential - to have something to do with one's day, even if it kinda sucks the life out of you and sometimes makes you dry heave. Something to dread going to is crucial to fully appreciate the time one isn't at that place...like the times when one pretends that she is sick.

I've had a really great time so far today, reading things (mostly about the planned parenthood thing, I can't get enough of it) and listening to things (Marc Maron's WTF, and RISK!, a storytelling podcast hosted by Kevin Allison - the "redhead gay" from The State) and watching things (Downton Abbey! May that show go on forever and ever). After I post this, I plan on going in the pool on our property for the first time. We've never seen anyone maintaining it, so we were a little wary (read: Leah forbade it) to take a dip in case there were any brain-eating amoebas making a home for themselves in the water. Luckily, our neighbors were ignorant of the possible horrors and have been swimming many times.  It's been a couple of weeks now since we first saw them out there, and I am happy to report they are still alive and seem to have their brains intact. Which is good for them, of course, and now we (read: Leah will never go in there) can swim!


I cooked some things today, too, of course. The main event was making bread, which I haven't done since we moved here, and hoo boy. So delicious. I got this recipe from this person who's probably really famous but I've only just stumbled upon today - the pioneer woman? (http://thepioneerwoman.com/)  Who is this woman and how does she have the time to do all the things she does? She probably never plays hooky.

Ingredients

• 20 ounces bread flour, about 4 cups (I used that delicious whole wheat flour and regular all purpose flour)
• 8 ounces water
• 4 ounces melted butter, chopped herbs of choice (I used thyme and rosemary, about 2 tablespoons)
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon  instant yeast

Preparation Instructions

Combine all ingredients together in the KitchenAid stand mixer with the dough hook for about 10 minutes or until the so-called "windowpane" test shows you've kneaded it enough (I did it by hand here and it took about 12 minutes).

Form the kneaded dough into a ball and set in an oiled bowl; cover with plastic wrap. Allow to double in size, about 1-3 hours.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Grease a dutch oven with olive oil. Punch down risen dough and form into a ball, then roll the ball around in the oiled skillet. Sprinkle kosher/coarse salt on top and cut a large "X" into surface of bread dough.
Bake on the center rack of your over for 30 minutes with the lid on, them remove the lid to finish it off for another 15 to 30 minutes (check for golden-ness).

I removed it immediately from the pan because I thought the bottom was burning (it was, a little, but not terribly). My loaf looks absolutely nothing like the pictures on that lady's site, but I am not at all disappointed.

All the passionfruits are above average

Hi guys! I'm writing this post just in case I don't get another chance before the semester engulfs me like it's a macrophage and I'm an opsonized antigen.

I hope this doesn't sound like a bright-siding exercise to cheer ourselves up because stuff in general is bad. We'd move back to the States in a heartbeat - don't get us wrong - but these are things about St. Kitts that legitimately and non-relativistically make us want to take our clothes off and roll around, they're so good.  These are the things that we'll say, "Remember that..." about when we're on our porch in rocking chairs in fifty years. These are the few small things we humbly suggest you should be jealous of. We've been talking about this blog entry for weeks, and I'm probably forgetting some stuff, but here goes:

Passionfruit
Let me tell you the secret to picking a good passionfruit: pick any passionfruit. No matter what the outside looks like, the inside will be flawless. They're grapefruity but different, slightly salty, the seeds are crunchy, and the name has to come from the silky, slimy, suggestive flesh.  They haunt my dreams. Laura got 8 of them yesterday for EC$5. (Less than US$2.)

Easy Bake whole wheat flour
What's really in this stuff? Who cares! It tastes like graham crackers, and when combined with some milk, molasses, baking powder, and the next item on the list, produces the most delicious pancakes I've ever eaten. (We had them this morning.)

Eggs

The chicken from the grocery stores here is a little tough and weird, but the eggs are cheap, thick shelled, irregularly shaped, bright yolked, and delicious. There are hens running around everywhere, which probably explains both.

Bananas

The bananas are soft and sweet and mild, like something a spoiled baby monkey would eat. Some are from St. Kitts, but the better ones are from Dominica, I think. And they're cheap. We put them on the pancakes.

Critters
Oh my god, the critters.

Zenaida doves

Hummingbird

Green vervet monkeys

Goat

More goats

Anole

Another kind of anole

Well, that took me all day. That's not all (of the critters), but you get the idea. 

red lentil and winter squash stew; cable woes

We live off campus now in our very own apartment. It's a not-fancy one bedroom just a mile down the road from Ross, and in the week Leah lived here before I came down, she made everything gleaming and spotless and homey. We didn't realize that the kitchen cabinets and counters were not, in fact, beige - some bleach and Leah's elbow grease revealed that they're actually sparkly white! We brought some of our own things from home, too, like rugs and curtains and framed pictures, to make it feel more like ours. And it does! It is bright and breezy and it feels really good in here.  Our apartment is part of an old, somewhat dilapidated, budget vacation rental situation. The owners live on the property and rent out the six still-intact units to Ross students (the other six units, upon snooping and pressing our noses to the dusty windows, seem to be in a state of suspended renovation).  The owners are an older couple. The wife, Ruth, is British, and must be around 70; she hobbles a bit because of constant sciatic nerve pain and bad hips. Her husband, Wilfred, is Kittitian and he seems older than her, but pretty spry, still. I think they obtain most of their income from operating a horseback riding business (in the morning, if we're lucky and they've booked riding tours, we see about a half dozen horse butts out of our bedroom window). They offer riding on the beach and in the rainforest, I think mostly to cruise passengers on pre-booked excursions. I know when they have riders coming, though - Ruth's shrill voice calls constantly to Poppy, a younger but still not very young guy who is their maintenance man and riding guide: "Poppy! Poppy, have you saddled the horses yet?" "Poppy? Poppy! Put your shirt on, they're going to be here soon" "Poppy! Poppy, please put your shirt on!" It sounds very tense and exciting, like the moment before company comes and your mother yells at you to do some last-minute thing. And then the riders arrive and everyone is quieter and very friendly, and Poppy is introduced and off they go, into the mountain. Leah and I are going to book a tour someday soon, because she's never been on a horse ("I'm Jewish", she explains).

It's my job to set up the utilities, because Leah's at class all day and I can't claim to have much better to do. We're still working on getting the voice-over-internet phone so that we can make cheaper calls home, and also so that people can call us, but the cable company (which is called, by the way, "The Cable" - that's the name of the company, for real) has been, erm, challenging.  Waiting for a cable guy is an annoyance in any country, surely. I usually feel trapped in my apartment, afraid to go to the bathroom in case I don't hear the buzzer, and the dude inevitably shows up five minutes before the end of his six hour time window. But trying to get the internet and phone installed in St. Kitts has been mind-blowingly frustrating - like the level of awful service is so unbelievable that it makes me want to blow my brains out.  Today marks the third day of my waiting for the very specific "before the afternoon" scheduled installation, and the third day I called to ask, "Um, is the technician coming today?" The phone calls haven't been easy, either.  I've waited on hold for hours now, eating up the pre-paid minutes on my little cell phone - calling land lines from a cell is very expensive - getting hung up on, transferred to lines that just ring and ring, listening to the same song over and over (a rip-off of Time Warner's "triple play" rap from a few years ago which segues into a praising Jesus gospelly number). And every day, including today, someone tells me that they don't have me scheduled, we'll have to do it on ______ (the next business day).  I confirm; for example: "Okay, so you lost my order again. You are going to be here to install the phone tomorrow in the morning, yes? Mmmhmm, tomorrow, Tuesday, hopefully before noon. Great, see you tomorrow before noon!" No one has offered even the courtesy apology, a head tilted to the side slow shake, an insincere, "so sorry", whatever.  I am trying my darndest to be more laid back or feel less freakin' entitled. It's hard. Really, I just want to be able to call my sister, and going a week without talking to her about every single thing has just been weird.  Being able to leave the apartment, while it is lovely, would probably feel pretty good, too.

In my time waiting for the cable guy these past few days, I've made a bunch of foods for the week: many soups and stews from homemade chicken and vegetable stocks, daal and curries and vegetables roasted and steamed and slawed. One of my favorite one-pot recipes is a hearty red lentil and chickpea dish with cubed butternut squash. It's great for winter, for all of you who are fuh-reezing cold right now. The weather here has been cooler, too, with temperatures dipping into the 70s, even!

Here's that recipe:

Winter Squash and Red Lentil Stew

1 tablespoon olive oil
3 medium carrots, sliced 1/2 inch thick
1 cup chopped onion (1 large)
1 green chile pepper, minced
1 pound pumpkin or winter squash, peeled (or not), seeded, and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 15-ounce can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), rinsed and drained
1 cup red lentils, rinsed and drained
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1/4 cup chopped peanuts (optional)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro


In a large Dutch oven or soup pot, heat oil over moderately-high heat. Add onions and carrots and chile and cook until beginning to soften. Stir in broth, winter squash, lentils, chickpeas, tomato paste, ginger, cumin, salt, turmeric, and pepper. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until squash is tender and lentils are beginning to fall apart, about 15 minutes. Stir in lime juice, and ladle into bowls, topped with cilantro and peanuts.

*ps - sorry, no pictures for right now, but I'll have some up soon!

tea eggs

Taiwan has a presence in St. Kitts that I still don't fully understand.  I think the story goes that Taiwan was one of the first countries to recognize and establish a diplomatic relationship with the then newly independent St. Kitts in 1983 -  but I don't know how it became to be what seems like a very influential relationship. Every year, St. Kitts sends a handful of its brightest high school graduates to Taiwan to go to college, and Taiwan helps with tourism and green energy here too, but exactly how and in what capacities it does those things, I don't know.  No one I ask has any idea what the deal is, and a google search yields frustratingly little.  Taiwan's most visible influence here is in their "agricultural technical missions" which are all over the place, marked with a sign that bears both countries' flags. Plagiarizing from the internet: these missions aim to train farmers, improve agricultural cultivation techniques, and teach agro-processing.  The products from these missions that make it to the grocery store are mostly jams and jellies made from local fruits; they make yogurt, there, too.

some of the only locally produced items in St. Kitts

The thing I really don't understand is what St. Kitts could possibly give to Taiwan to make this relationship worth it for them - but I'm glad for it, because those technical missions are the only agriculture here (everything else is imported: fruits and vegetables are from at closest Dominica, but I've eaten more produce from Canada here than I probably have in my whole life). 

Now this is kind of sad, but thinking about Taiwan made me really...hungry. I couldn't help but think of my memories of Taiwan from a trip to visit my friend Helen there last April, and most of what we did was eat. We ate all day long for seven days - steamed buns filled with things, fried dumplings filled with things, rice balls - yes, filled with things! Exotic-to-me fruits and spicy vegetable dishes,  meat on sticks, fruit on sticks, quail eggs on sticks - all with sauces.  It was glorious.

Helen's favorite restaurant in Xanxia

 I became obsessed with trying to recreate any of those delicious foods, but cooking real Chinese food is daunting.  I have no idea how they do that stuff, what oils they use, at what point oyster sauce enters the equation, if something is fermented, I don't know.  Then I remembered tea eggs! I could definitely make those - they're just hard boiled eggs, steeped in black tea, soy sauce, and spices. You crack the shell once they're cooked so that the soy sauce mixture can seep in and flavor the egg, and the cracked shell produces a beautiful marbled effect, like tie-dye. They were mostly in the convenience stores in Taiwan - every 7-11 had a big burbling cauldron-looking crock pot of them on the counter.  So the other day,  Leah and I made tea eggs, and they were great, tasted just like the ones in Taiwan.  And then, lacking a bamboo steamer, I made a make-shift one by poking holes in an aluminum pie tin and setting it just so in a pot of boiling water, and we had some buns (bao),  too.   It's going to be weird when I have a job again and don't have time for wondering about the diplomatic relationships between nations and making elaborate meals, huh?

thanksgivings

Thanksgiving was weird.  Leah went to class and except for  the English ex-pat manager of the Smoke 'N' Booze telling me to enjoy my holiday as I was leaving with my duty-free wine, there wasn't any mention of the day at all, really.  Like, duh, obviously, but it still felt bizarre.  I missed being at home, but I could imagine, I think pretty well, what was going on. On the morning of Thanksgiving, my mother was in a nightgown/housecoat with her hair in a sweaty ponytail, stuttering harried orders to get some pot or another from the basement.  My mother, if you don't know her, cannot find words when she's stressed. So she'll just say whatever comes to mind first, which leaves her frustrated and the listener amused, like, "Get the...the toaster off my bed and make sure it's folded".  She always ends these statements with, "You know what I mean", and surprisingly, we always do. My father vacuumed and made the antipasto.  Around 1pm, the McCues started trickling in, and there were manhattans and scotches on rocks and then finally, dinner was served, and maybe it was a little late, but oh wow, everything is so delicious, Paula! (it really is - I especially missed my mom's stuffing. and the lima beans. and the stuffed mushrooms. oh, and the other mushrooms.) And my cousin Deedee didn't talk to anyone until she had seconds, because she can't waste time with conversation: she's only got around twenty minutes until her stomach signals to her brain that it's full, after all.  Sometimes people say what they're thankful for and there's always a ton of laughing and everyone is SO freaking loud. I was glad that I was able to imagine it so well, because even though I made a turkey dinner for two (using the weird, cross-section cut of drumstick that we realized as we took our first bites STILL HAD QUILLS IN IT) and we tried to skype with our families, it wasn't the same. 

gravy boat mug

The next day we met with some friends for a potluck, and it was there that we got uncomfortably, painfully, Thanksgivingly full. The kind of full where it's impossible to sit, but standing's no good either, and shit, laying down hurts in a whole new way. There were multiple desserts, was what really did it - I'm looking at you, peanut butter pie and you, chocolate tart with the whipped cream and the raspberry sauce.  I brought a pumpkin pie pudding type thing (because we don't have an oven here), that was a no-bake situation using gelatin, which made me nervous that it was going to be like pumpkin jello, but it was smooth and creamy and really delicious, and made me want to be the "Such a hit! If I could give this recipe 10 stars, I would!" person on the reviews.  But really, if I could give it ten stars, I would, and next year I'm going to pour it into a gingersnap crust and share it with my family. 

snorkeling and scallion pancakes

Leah and I went for an unplanned snorkel this morning - unplanned in that we meant to go for a exercisey swim, like a huff-and-puff, my-arms-are-sore-from-this swim. But the  Caribbean Sea was at its clearest, calmest, and most glittery gorgeous today, so as soon as we started, we saw tons and tons of amazingly beautiful tropical fish and huge, awesome coral, and any ideas we had about cardiovascular workouts were quickly forgotten. We doodled around for the next hour, trying to get each other's attention by pointing excitedly when something was particularly cool and giving the underwater thumbs-up.  We saw ALL THE THINGS! So many tropical fish! It really felt like we were in a giant version of a dentist's office fish tank. We had to swim through schools of teeny fish, the little silver kind that look like they'd show up in an Asian snackfood - thousands of them, all darting from one direction to the next totally in unison, like they had a single brain.  There were iridescent fish and spotted fish, weirdly shaped long ones and so many different colors - electric blues and yellows and greens! And the biggest brain coral in the world, probably. I wish we had some pictures, but we don't have an underwater camera, so I took some from this awesome website that identifies fish for you:

it was kind of like this!

oh yeah, we saw tons of these clowns.

bluehead wrasse - looks like a sneaker to me. there was another fish that I thought looked like a crossword, so...

trumpetfish!

Blue Tang. bluetie tang. 

Later this evening I made scallion pancakes because I thought I'd make the day even more excellent. They were flaky and greasy and great; tasted just like scallion pancakes, though I did miss the hoisin sauce.  I used this recipe and after I gobbled up the testers (that's what the first two of any kind of pancake are called, right?), I brought them over to where Leah is studying with a couple of friends, because I'm the greatest. 

ginger wine rolling pin

this is hard for me to look at because now they're all gone. I miss you, my little delicious one.

Governor General

I've been helping to plan a fun run/walk event for the Special Olympics chapter here in St. Kitts, only because my supervisor at Ade's Place was assigned to do it and I've pretty much become her assistant.  The chairman of the board of the Special Olympics is a stern, ornery older man named Mr. Lazar (names are in general much more formal here; for the most part, people are known by their title and surname) who stutters a firm disagreement to any and every suggestion put forth to him and ends all of our frustratingly pointless planning meetings by speaking (not singing) the lyrics of "Tell Laura I love her".  Which is weird, yeah, but made weirder because the song ends in vehicular death and undying love - what was with that theme in pop songs in the early 60s?  Anyway, Mr. Lazar is maybe a little senile and definitely very hard to work with, but he's well-meaning and invited me to the Special Olympics annual "appreciation dinner" at the Governor-General's house.  Because I'm an ignorant jerk (what kind of person lives in a country for almost three months and doesn't know the structure of that country's government?), I had to look up who this "governor general" was - turns out, he's like - THE guy. He's as high as it goes in St. Kitts. And his house?  Is a mansion.

Sir Cuthbert Sebastian

 When I first arrived, people were nervously waiting outside the grounds, not knowing if it was time to go in, and I realized that I was inappropriately underdressed: all of the women were wearing mother-of-the-bride type gowns with shiny things in their hair and special-occasion jewelry.  After a few minutes of waiting, army men holding huge automatic rifles gestured with the tips of their guns to usher in the sequined-and-satin fancy ladies through the gate and up the drive, into the house.

portrait of the queen in parlor

 The Governor- General was waiting for us in the second parlor-type room,  and he shook every one's hand as we filed past him. He's 90 years old, pretty robust, with tons of bright white hair and watery eyes.  Everyone thanked him and called him "your Excellency"; I didn't hear him speak.  We were led outside, and once on the lawn, I got a twelve ounce plastic cupful of the finest Carlo Rossi from the bar (I'm pretty sure I was the only person not drinking fruit punch, as they twisted the cap off of the jug of wine for me);  it smelled like cancer dust but I drank all of it anyway, because I was nervous, but also because it was free booze.

There were probably fewer than a hundred people there, and after we all had drinks in our hands, we sat in folding chairs to watch Mr. Lazar's speech and the presentation of awards to the coaches and teachers. Like all award ceremonies, this took for-ev-ver. Finally it was time to eat weird fried things (I think saltfish fritters?) and chicken wings out of silver chafing stands, and as I was on the last bite of the almondy cake with the seafoam green frosting, loud and awesome drums started and the "Masqueraders" came out and stomped around in a dance. The masqueraders were all pretty young kids, dressed in costumes made of strips of fabric sewn to dangle down, with huge headpieces of peacock feathers.  I was in the front row, really into it the whole time because I love that stuff, and one of them grabbed me and made me dance with him - and you know me, I just can't stand being the center of attention. Heh.

night photography is hard.

So far St. Kitts has seemed like a place where many, many things are so much more difficult than they should be - but there are also a few opportunities to do things that wouldn't have been possible at home... this week, I met the President and partied at the White House. Sorta.