So remember that post back at the beginning of the year, where I said that I wasn't going to lose my groove and was going to be sure to keep trying new and exciting recipes? Yeah. I think I did too much cooking and baking in the first 8 weeks of this year. These past couple weeks without a plethora of guests (only one or two at a time) has meant that I've tried just about NOTHING. Nothing but ice cream, that is. And really, ice cream is the good stuff - the center of the food universe you might say, at least my food universe. Last night was the worse, because I even messed up the ice cream. (In my defense, I think it was a very old can of coconut milk that messed it up...)

Losing my groove could also be due to the heat. There's nothing worse than heating the entire house along with the oven for several hours while you experiment with new recipes. We even strategize to determine the least required amount of time to turn on a single burner... it's that hot!

I'm soooo over summer. Ready for some cooler weather, and with it, a resurgence of trying new recipes. :) Bring on winter, I say!

(Also, I need to find some good recipe blogs in the same hemisphere I'm in. All the amazing recipe blogs that I read are just coming out of winter, and while spring recipes may appeal to me, warm, comforting winter recipes do not. It's an interesting dilemma. Maybe I need to browse through their archives from July and August. :)

A Quiet Night

It’s not quite 11 PM and I’m here typing away on my laptop. Why? Well, quite simply because I’m hoping that by sheer force and determination, the internet signal will come back. Probably not going to happen, but a girl can hope, right?

It’s a quiet night in Francistown. But wait… is it really that quiet?

There’s a particularly obnoxious cricket right outside my window (and I mean right outside) and he is backed up by a whole chorus of his friends. It’s not his friends that I mind, it is his closeness. I need a little bit of personal space.

My fan clacks above my head. When it starts to sound like it is going to clack right off the ceiling, I stand up and grasp the tip, gently swivel the whole unit, and center it again. This helps… sometimes for a couple hours, sometimes for a few minutes. Once I’m sound asleep, it doesn’t bother me… it’s just in the half-asleep state that it sometimes interrupts my stillness.

Outside my window, all the dogs of the neighborhood, who were just a moment ago pleasantly snoozing, are now howling and baying and snapping – no doubt giving their opinion to someone who is walking by. And right outside my bedroom door, I hear a snoring Rottweiler, who is choosing to ignore all her buddies and sleep peacefully on. I’m so thankful that she isn’t a barker – only when it’s someone actually at our gate. Let’s hope she doesn’t pick up any bad habits from the neighborhood.

Then there is the dripping from the hot water heater (or geezer). It tends to overheat, overflow, explode, whatever you want to call it from time to time. This can be a problem since it is right by my window and if my window happens to be open (like last time) I end up mopping my floor on a day when I wasn’t planning on doing so. But when it is happy, it just pleasantly drips from time to time, so that’s a nice sound.

These are the sounds all around me on this 'quiet' night in Francistown.

Ice Cream Recipes

With the arrival of our ice cream maker in the container, we've been making lots of the creamy goodness. It's a wonderful way to cool off and a nice treat instead of baked goods which involve an oven. We can buy ice cream here, but it is not the same as what we are used to in the states. A quick look at the list of ingredients shows you why - instead of using full cream milk, they use vegetable fat. It's similar in consistency, but the taste (and aftertaste, ick) are much different. Making our own means that we can use real cream and real milk... much better for you, I'm sure, and more what we are used to. In the long run, it's a lot cheaper to make our own, and there are so many more options for flavors and mix-ins!

Vanilla with Chocolate Chunks

Do you have an ice cream maker? Our is like this one here, and filling both bowls yields us two quarts of ice cream. Here are some of our favorite recipes and combinations.

Basic Vanilla Ice Cream
1 16-oz can of coconut milk
2 cups cream
1 cup sugar
2 tsp vanilla
Pour into bowls, then fill to the top of the beaters with milk.

Basic Chocolate Ice Cream
2 cups cream
1 cup milk
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 T cocoa powder (or more... I just dump it in until it looks dark enough :)
Pour into bowls, then fill to the top of the beaters with milk.

Banana Bread Ice Cream

Banana Bread Ice Cream
3 mashed bananas
2 cups cream
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cinnamon
1 T custard powder (you could leave this out if you can't find it)
Pour into bowls, then fill to the top of the beaters with milk.
(This easily turns into 'Chunky Monkey', as we like to call it, by omitting the cinnamon, adding chocolate chunks and nuts.)

Mango Frozen Yogurt
2 mangoes, peeled and mashed
1/2 cup orange juice
4-5 T honey (or more to taste)
2 cups plain yogurt (if you can find greek or bulgarian, that's even better)
Pour into bowls, then fill to the top of the beaters with plain yogurt.

Mango Frozen Yogurt

Orange-Banana Sorbet
5 or 6 juiced oranges, with pulp
2 mashed bananas
2-3 T honey
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups plain yogurt
Pour into bowls, then fill to the top of the beaters with plain yogurt.

The options are limitless, of course. We like to throw in extras of whatever we have on hand - nuts plain or toasted, chocolate chunks, crushed candy bars, crushed cookies or brownies, mini frozen cookie dough balls, swirls of caramel or fudge, ground vanilla bean, crushed coconut, etc.

Behold, I show you a mystery

Bhut Jolokia peppers are the third hottest peppers in the world. Up until December of last year, it was confirmed as the hottest pepper in the world, but two new hybrids have since come along. Still, it's pretty hot. ;)

My brother Sam has guarded his Bhut Jolokia pepper seeds and painstakingly planted some when we got here. Out of the four he planted, only one lasted long enough to be transplanted into a larger pot. That one pepper plant has had a hard life, seeing as it has to live in a certain dog's territory - a certain dog who thinks it is her duty to eat every living thing in sight. But once the plant grew to a certain height, the dog seemed to leave it alone, and then it flourished.

By the time the pepper plant was about 30 inches high, it was covered in pretty little white flowers, the beginnings of the Bhut Jolokia pepper. Sam was so excited! If each of those flowers produced one pepper, he'd have enough heat to supply the entire city of Francistown. A little bit goes a long way when it comes to the Bhut Jolokia. Soon one little baby pepper was growing and all the other flowers looked promising.

Then we went to South Africa for one week and the poor little pepper plant suffered in the heat and very dry weather. When we returned, all the flowers had fallen off and half of the leaves were crispy brown. Sam trimmed, watered, and babied the plant until it perked back up. That one little baby pepper was still hanging on, now almost full size. All we had to do was wait for it to ripen. Even just one pepper would help him make a large batch of very hot sauce.

This morning, I saw the pepper basking in the sun. At lunch, Sam pulled aside the curtain in the hallway to check on his little Bhut Jolokia. It was gone! There was the stem, with the raw edge where the pepper had been freshly snapped off. He searched all around the plant, to no avail.

And therein lies the mystery. What happened to the Bhut Jolokia? We may never know.

The assumed culprit, of course, is the dog. But we don't think she ate it, because I'm sure we would have heard her pacing around for hours, whining at the burn in her mouth, drinking buckets of water. So that only leaves us to assume that she buried it, which is what she does with all contraband items she steals (car washing rags from the garage are her favorites). But her hiding places are many, and finding a buried bright red dishtowel is easier to unearth than a small, green pepper.

Who knows? Maybe one day we'll go outside and there will be another little Bhut Jolokia plant, growing in some unusual spot, planted by a Rottweiler.

Six Months

Today marks six months to the day that we landed in South Africa. It's hard to believe that much time has already passed, and in other ways it feels like we have now been here for a much longer time.

We had some things to attend to in South Africa, so we made the trip seven hours southward to my brother's house for the week. The night before we were to leave, my dad came down with a horrible sickness. He decided to stick it out and make the trip anyway, and I'm so glad we did. By the time we got here and got him to a doctor he was much worse, and it was soon confirmed that he has malaria. We are fairly certain he contracted the malaria while in Zambia, although Francistown is considered a malarial area.

So he's been recovering this week, while we get service done on our vehicle and attend to some other things. Someone jokingly said there are two stages of malaria - being afraid you might die, and then hoping you would just die. From his testimony, that seems to hold true. :) Poor guy, he's feeling much better today although his appetite and energy levels are drastically small.

Today, I am missing home. Home in PA, that is. The kids watched a Sunday school video, recorded months ago, and I was the teacher, singing and drawing and teaching my class. It was strange watching myself in that familiar role, something I was so comfortable with, but something I may never do again. We were able to connect and watch the live video stream of our home church's morning service. It's been months since we had an internet connection strong enough to do that. And I found what I missed - beyond the fellowship and the friendship and the American-style expository preaching - was the music.

At the same time, I am reluctant to say that I am ready to go back to that home, because I am so happy and so content to be here. I know this is where God wants me for now, and in some ways it is hard to think of changes that will one day come. If there is one thing I don't like about my life, it is this - the constant heart-tearing and heart-splitting that happens. Never completely at home, always missing somewhere and someone.

Getting Grass - a long and somewhat humorous recap

I mentioned the other day how Mom and I bought some plants to begin landscaping the front of our house. Notice the word ‘begin.’ This story is not yet over.

While we set out the plants we purchased, we were counting on one thing. Something large, or rather two somethings large - one in front of each rectangle on the design of our wall and gate. Our house is completely surrounded by a concrete wall, probably about 5 foot in height. There is a large sliding gate in the very front. From the outside, the wall and gate is divided into thirds - the gate and two sections of wall to the right of the gate. Make sense? Don’t worry, I’ll show you a picture at the end.

The two sections of the wall each have a large white rectangle in the center, and we wanted something large to put in front of each of these rectangles, placing the smaller plants we just bought around them. We saw some larger things at the nursery, but nothing really ‘spoke’ to us, mainly because we both set our hearts on something else already. (Or Mom set her heart, and I merely encouraged her. :) 

You see, a couple blocks down from us, there were several large clumps of grass. Not just any grass, mind you, but large bushy, beautiful ornamental type grass. If I had seen that grass in a nursery, that tall and such a lovely color, I would have expected to pay a lot of money for it. Yet here it was growing on the side of the road!

Now, you have to understand something about the way it works here. People don’t have the same concept of a mowed lawn here. Generally, people dig up everything that grows in their lawn. This is done with a shovel or a rake, and someone, generally a hired gardener, goes through and pulls up everything that is green. Having a grassy yard is a hard thing to come by. It takes a lot of work to plant, it takes a lot of work to grow, and it takes a lot of work to keep maintained. You have to water it (because this is a desert after all) and then you have to have a lawnmower, etc, etc, etc. So they just pull everything up and keep their yards neatly raked dirt, sand, or gravel. However, the sides of the road or empty plots are just left free for most of the year. All sorts of thorn trees and bushes grow up quickly, as well as several different varieties of grass. Periodically, people will come through and cut down weeds along the side of the road, leave them to dry out for a time, then burn them off. Whether this is done by the government or whether it is done by individuals living in nearby houses, I have no idea.

So all that to explain that this particular grass that caught our eye wasn’t really in someone’s yard. In fact, there were five or six clumps of it along a nearby street, but they were just haphazardly sprung up, several further back into the weeds, but a couple literally on the side of the road. The clump of grass was beautiful – it had thicker stalks and then wispier little pieces, with tall wheat, um, fronds? sticking out of the top. The whole clump was about three feet tall and probably three feet wide, though the bottom root system comprised a much smaller area.

We decided to go for it. That grass was exactly what we needed for the front bed and it was free! It was growing on the side of the road!! Plus, we’d seen where some workers were starting to clear areas of the streets around us. For all we knew, they were going to be cleaning up that street very soon and we wanted to rescue our grass.

But what to do? Is this out of character? Is it socially awkward or culturally offensive? We wanted to be discreet as possible. So we waited until the moments between dusk and sunset. Then we loaded up the car with our supplies, and stealthily pulled away, at least, as stealthily as we could in our little Toyota Chico with a sticking gear shift. Not two houses away from home, a truck pulled behind us. He was starting and stopping and weaving and swerving, making it very clear that we were driving too slow. Little did he know we had two buckets of water in the back we were desperately hoping not to spill. Finally he passed, and we continued to poke along.

We reached our destination (all of three blocks away), and moved into immediate action. Jumping out of the  car, we determined which clump we wanted. We went with the one that was closest to the road… less possibility of finding a snake with the grass. Plus, there was a large ditch and then another section of weeds before a fence and someone’s yard, so we were certain that we weren’t taking someone’s lawn decoration. 

Oh, we worked so quick. Dumping the water on the plant to loosen the soil, I bunched all the individual grasses together and began pulling from the top while Mom grabbed the shovel and began scraping from the bottom (literally scraping… the thing was growing between the curb and the pavement of the road). Half of it split away, and was immediately plopped into the first bucket and thrown in the back seat. While tugging and shoving on the second half, a group of four guys came around the corner. They never said a word, just gave us the strangest looks. We were both hysterically giggling at this point. Finally the second half came loose, was safely stowed in the back seat, and home we drove, acting as if it was perfectly normal for two white women to be digging up grass on the side of the road.

(See our grass? Ain't it purty? Don't mind the large sand pile or the piles of rocks... it's a work in progress.)

Now the grass has its home in our front yard and we’re just praying it doesn’t die. :)

February 22, 2011

Mom and I have been enjoying the last couple days as all the guys headed north for an outreach trip. While they are camping out with no electricity and no running water, we are enjoying having the entire house (quiet!) to ourselves and a greatly relieved internet connection. :) Lest you think we are spending all this time sitting around, let me assure you that there is so much to do!!! With our container's arrival, everything was unloaded and stacked in the garage. We opened a few of the kitchen boxes, but left most everything else to be dealt with this week. It is much easier to unpack all the boxes and rearrange/clean/organize everything when there aren't people everywhere. (And our house isn't *that* big, so when everyone is here, there are people everywhere! There are people sleeping in every room, save the kitchen and the bathrooms. It's fun, but just a little bit cramped.)

We've been busy little bees and have everything unpacked and organized now, except for the literature, which must go in the garage. So first the garage must be emptied and cleaned out, then refilled as we put everything back, find an ingenious way to make some shelves for the literature, and hope that there is still room to park two cars when we get done. It's gonna be tight, but if anyone can do it, it's us. ;)

I forfeited my dresser to fit a small desk in my room. I was only using two out of the five drawers in my dresser anyway, and it was needed elsewhere. So I did some rearranging in my closet to fit everything in there, and set up my desk, which is really a small folding table disguised under a tablecloth with African animals on it. For me, it is so much nicer to have a desk than a dresser. A desk is so convenient for obvious things like writing and computer work, and other less obvious but equally important things like organizing my supply of pens and sticky notes. (I <3 office supplies!!!)

We also have several visits throughout the week planned, as we have more free time now that we aren't cooking three big meals a day. And there's always a list of literature to be printed, so we'll probably get to that later this week. Although we were excited about having a car at our disposal and no schedule to compete with, we hadn't even gone anywhere until this afternoon. After lunch, we took a trip to Game for a few household items, stopped to treat ourselves to a milkshake at Wimpy's, and then stopped by the greenhouse to buy some plants to start landscaping the front of our gate and some herbs to plant in our garden. It reminded me of lazy August afternoons in PA, where we might go to Walmart, stop at Chick-fil-a for a milkshake, and then browse around Dan Schantz for a while, coming out with more plants than we intended to. Deja vu, right?

Then home for a supper of a big, fresh salad, then outside to work on planting the new additions to our yard and do some other yardwork. It was a perfect evening with another stupendous African sunset, giving way to the periwinkle twilight and eventually a clear black sky full of stars. I love this Africa.

(And, I love that our house is finally starting to feel like home. It's amazing how just a few small things from the old home can make this place feel more permanent. Less dorm room-ish, if you know what I mean. :)

Post Valentine's Day

I wrote this the day after Valentine's Day, and almost thought about not posting it. But I think it might be an encouragement to some of you. It doesn't really matter if we are single or married, it doesn't really matter if we are old or young - are you following and doing God's will? He has a plan for you, He has a purpose for you, He has a job for you to do TODAY. Are you living it?

--------------------------------

Every year, I find myself thinking the same thing. “I just feel like by this time next year everything will be different. By this time next year, I’ll know who I’m going to marry and the plans of my life will drastically change.” And every year, the plans of my life drastically change, but here I am, still single and absolutely no idea who I will marry.

So I was wondering last night, which happened to be Valentine’s Day – how would my life have been different over the last seven years if instead of being sure that marriage was coming before the next love holiday, I was just living as if I would be single for those seven years? Would I have lived my life differently? 

And I came to the conclusion that no, for the most part, I wouldn't have changed anything about these last seven years, had I known then what I know now. Of course, there are some small decisions that I regret. There are some days I wish I could erase, some pity parties I wish I could remove from the records, a lot of wasted time spent on frivolous things that I don’t even remember now. But the big decisions of my life – the decision to continue my education, the decision to work for my church, the decisions to travel and help missionaries, the decision to stay single thus far, the decisions to save money and invest money in worthy goals rather than an apartment and car, the decision to move halfway around the world with my family without a ‘man in sight’ – none of these big decisions do I regret, and none of these decisions do I think I would have done differently had I known, at the tender age of 18, that I would still be single on my 26^th birthday.

It’s a nice feeling, knowing that I have lived my life thus far without regrets, and the glory for that is not in my great decision-making skills, but in the protection of God! I can imagine if I had stayed home, forgone school and just twiddled my thumbs waiting for my Prince Charming, I would be a little disillusioned by now and be regretting those choices. But instead I got out there and did something. I was busy, I was productive, and I thank the Lord that He was able to use me in small part in some amazing ministries. I’ve made a lot of friends around the world and I’ve seen a lot of interesting things along the way, but those are just the frosting on the cake. The sweet, sweet cake is that God had and still has a plan for my life. Some people are sad that it isn’t laid out in one fell swoop, but I’m glad that He reveals it only one step at a time. Sometimes, even the next step seems a little bit hazy, but that just adds to the suspense of how He will lead. My next step is looking a little blurry right now, so I’ll be ecstatic to see how He works everything out. :)

To all the single girls out there, especially to the younger ones fresh out of high school, this is my advice. Don't put yourself in someone else's box. There are a lot of books out there that tell single girls how they should be living. But just like any other area of life, it is not a one-size-fits-all will of God. Of course, there are some things that are clearly defined by Scripture that every Christian should be doing. But in other areas of life - where you go to school and for how long, where you live, how you support yourself or whether you are dependent on others - all these areas must be decided by you. Don't be overwhelmed by it all; just do the next thing that God wants you to do. And that is the most important thing I think I can tell you - every day, ask yourself this question: What does God want me to do TODAY? I pray that in seven years, whether you be single or married, you can also look back and see the hand of God leading you every step of the way!

Bed Update

Is it pathetic that I keep talking about my bed? It is pathetic that I was SO EXCITED that my parents got their bed today, so I in turn could get their temporary bed, so I wouldn't have an air mattress anymore? Maybe, but at this point I don't really care.

Live blogging from THE BED... no more sliding on a squeaky bed. No more getting 'down into bed' or climbing 'up out of bed.' No more wave reaction (when something or someone sits on one side, and the wave of air pushes the other side away). No more sweaty bed. No more bumpy bed. Just a nice, firm, REAL mattress, sitting on a bed frame, right where it should be.

So happy... g'night. ;)

(Oh, yes... we didn't just get a bed today. :) We got all our STUFF that we packed so long ago - six months! In between all the bed situating, we did unpack a couple of the kitchen boxes and marveled at everything we packed for ourselves back in the day. I think I got most excited about the rolling pin. There may have been a happy dance involved. Also, the bundt pan gave much joy. Over and out... I'm really going to bed now!)

More airbed talk

Did you know that there are approximately 342 ways to position yourself on an airbed? This number, however, is severely cut down when you are trying to position yourself with a) a laptop, b) modesty, c) smooth space for a mouse, d) in reaching distance of the power source, d) and last but not least, in a way that won’t give you a crick in your neck (what can I say, I’m getting old). Yes, options are now severely limited. And of all the options that are left to you, they will only be comfortable for approximately 4.7 minutes. Then you have to reposition or risk leg cramps.

*sigh*

Can you understand why I am so happy about our container getting here? Not only will I have a (real) bed, but I will have a table too! Where it will fit in my room is beside the point, but I’m getting giddy with all the possibilities for comfort. It’s been a long four months, folks.