Christmas Mayhem

Why O looks so shell-shocked I'm not sure...This was the first holiday (counting birthdays, easter, anything) in forever that he actually slept past 6. Usually he's up at 4 and is a wreck all day.  Don't you love our rad tree? This is the cut-out/flat pack tree's second christmas....and maybe the last, it's looking so sad and is nearly broken.   The kids cut it out of backerboard with a leatherman and put ornament hanging holes in with a crooked hand drill.  We saw and ad for a 2-meter tall fake palm tree and we wanted it BAD.  But it was expensive (2M kwacha./$400) and when we saw it in person it was really lame.  I mean really really lame.  If it goes on sale after Christmas.....I might have to spring for it.

The kids had a few scavenger hunts to find christmas presents...the first was almost eaten -- two clues were hidden inside two crepes!

...and the kids sorting out more clues.

Santa completed the TINTIN collection this year!  (Caveat... we're taking a pass on 'tintin in the congo' -- one that most publishers agree was from another era and could be left out of the reprints.)  Most interesting is the 'last' book -- a collection of papers from Herge's notebook, his unfinished notes for the book he was working on when he died

Can they EVER have enough legos?? (Thanks Santa Anna!)

Daddy-O modeling the most hideous awesome shirt ever.  Thing 2 INSISTED on sewing something christmas eve...all the shops were closed and the traffic was too thick to go out anyway, and so he picked THIS out of the fabric box.  It happens to be the lining of our couch (under the cushions) so if he ever is looking for a good hiding place, he'll be perfectly camouflaged.  

Enjoying the first episode of the "Barefoot Detectives"
 (Note:  TJ's wearing the shirt that Thing 2 used as the pattern for his elephant tunic creation)

TJ's missing present was on the roof.  Here is Thing 2 deciding AGAINST climbing along the open balcony railing.

"What?"  Approach attempt #2 -- send the kid up a rotten wooden ladder to retrieve your present!

an afternoon with the new toys:  underwater camcorder and the body board.  (happy that the sun decided to make an appearance)

Future Jaques Cousteau.  Filming his shadow at the bottom of the swimming pool.

SHARK ATTACK! Swim for your lives!!

I got so excited about this I forgot to put them in TJ's stocking.  Just imagine dancing rings around your tastebuds with juicy hot dog flavoured chips.  Mmmmmmm, DISCOS! Let's snack?  (ooof, let's not!)

"Dear Leader, Your breath is so fresh!"  This was the bestest stocking stuffer from last year.  So good, in fact that I really couldn't think of anything (excepting the Hot Dog Discos) to top it.  

snow-globes for dessert.  oh how I love from-scratch chocolate pudding.

Poseurs

The thing I like best about portraits is not so much getting a good picture, it's getting the picture where you can SEE the personalities.  With this set of photos I think you can also start confidently putting bets on where they'll be in 15 years. 

Reclaimed land

A few months back I was lamenting the appearance of a bull-dozer (yes, an ACTUAL BULLDOZER!) in the marsh behind our house.  Since we moved in there was this amazing greenbelt of sorts between our house in Jesmondine and the next street of houses over in Roma.  The bull dozers took out EVERYTHING: mango trees, sugar cane, huge clumps of banana palms...everything.  Then they burned anything remaining.  They cleared the land right up to our wall-fence* and left a swath of charred dry brown earth.  A few structures were completed and I'm sure there are plans for more.  Construction was fast and furious as the Rainy Season deadline approached.

Now that the rain has finally come (sort of), the marsh is back to it's green lush self again.  The bananas and cane are back and the grass is shoulder high most everywhere.  The birds are so happy but are missing the trees for sure.  There are a few new paths which bring a steady stream of people by our place.  It's a shame it's not preserved but we're happy for now at least to have the marsh back, even if it's only temporary.

*A wall-fence is an actual thing.  In most cases it's a big, tall concrete block wall topped with glass shards and electrified wire. I think it's probably one word even:  wallfence.

little chefs and foodie potlucks

We had a party a bit ago...having only Americans over  for a meal wasn't snobby enough for us so we narrowed the invite list to from just people from Seattle.  The little chefs made Jamie Oliver's Fish Cakes.  In Jamie's early days as the young phenom Naked Chef he was too cool for me and I resisted his siren call.  No more....now I'm a total convert and have 4 of his cookbooks that I use regularly. Maybe Santa will bring me another?   For the fishcake recipe I just told them what to do -- they did everything but the frying. THIS recipe is easy in that there are no fancy steps but there are many ingredients and a LOT of steps -- cook the fish, boil and mash the potatoes, cut up the spices, zest and squeeze the lemons, mix the 'cake,s' form the cakes, (fry the cakes), plate them....make the dip/dressing (essential) and then EAT THEM.  Thing 2 did it all but didn't even eat a single fishcake.  The food everyone brought was incredible, including the goat cheese stuff dates wrapped in proscuttio with a warm brown sugar and butter glaze.  God Bless Sub-Saharan-Seattlites and their fancy potlucks. You guys ROCK.

For the christmas season, we can't stop making this easy, delish Pumpkin bread:

PUMPKIN BREAD

Ingredients

3 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs, lightly beaten

1 can (15 ounces) solid-pack pumpkin (we usually use 3/4 of the big can -- because MORE is better, right? I think it makes and already moist bread SUPER moist)

3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves (we leave these out - we only have cloves from Zanzibar and they are WICKED fragrant...really too strong to use in most baking dishes)

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice (who has allspice?  we don't!)

1/2 cup water

Directions

In a large bowl, combine sugar, oil and eggs. Add pumpkin and mix well. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, cloves and allspice; add to the pumpkin mixture alternately with water, beating well after each addition.

Pour into two greased 9-in. x 5-in. loaf pans. Bake at 350° for 60-65 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Yield: 2 loaves.

Today we made a glaze, too -- powdered sugar, milk, vanilla, nutmeg and cinnamon...kinda noggy and festive and maybe a bit over the top.

Splash!

Are we having fun yet?

Starry Night

Hello, Orion!

Hello, House!

The sweetest things

Some darkroom days are more exciting than others.  This darkroom day was awesome.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Again, THREE BIG CHEERS for another amazing adventure into unknown culinary territory for our polucky Thanksgiving menu.  So far we've had 2 'traditional' (if unconventional) Thanksgiving holidays here in the Southern Hemisphere which at the time, we welcomed.  The first year here....it was great to have familiar food for once.  The next year we hosted a house-full of foreigners and it was fun to show them share with them some new things.  But since deciding to branch out, covered the middle-east (amazing), Cuba (holy smokes), and tonight, we went back to America but....travelled deep into the bayou with a full-on Creole menu.  Three American families and 5 chefs with ZERO Creole cooking or even TASTING experience put an unbelievable spread.  Who knows what jambalaya is supposed to taste like?  If we even came close I'll say I"m ready for the 'real' thing if anyone wants to show me b/c what came to our table was so amazing.

Our Kariba/Kafue crawfish did not come through, but in the end this was fine.  I am half glad it didn't b/c as much as I wanted to EAT crawfish I really did not want to FIX the crawfish. Here it really is louisiana crawfish --it's an invasive species and there is no market for it... the crawfish are having the time of their lives on a never-ending zambian safari.  I am assuming the crawfish originally came as part of a fisheries development project?  Officially sanctioned or not, I'd say it was a total bust. I'll see if I can find out more.

Instead we enjoyed: Joburg Jambalaya (w/ chicken, haddock and boerwors), creole-rubbed-village-chicken, and cajun calamari poppers...the kids had what I thought was a gigantic platter of panko-friend chicken (it looked giant but 6 kids scarfed it down in about 3 mintues), an anaemic watermelon, a bag of granny smith apples, green herb salad, sweet tea...and dessert - a pear pumpkin tarte, a Chipata sweet potato pie and creme caramel.

Next year?  Mediterranian? Chinese? Hawaiian? I already can't wait. 

Sadly, so very sadly, we are soon saying goodbye to our bestest LSK friends and the bestest family who have been with us for these Thanksgiving cooking adventures -  maybe we'll have to have Thanksgiving in Uganda and share our Thanksgiving feast on the shores of LakeVictoria next year.

Road Trip!

PS Thanksgiving Thursdays mean...strangely the kids have school and their normal school day.... the kids finished their homework and swam for an hour before dinner.... and will be up and off to school at 7.....but the best part....Someone will sneak into the kitchen at 8am and finish up ALL THE DISHES.  Sweeeeeet.

This has nothing to do with our thanksgiving dinner.  But I suppose it does have everything to do with being thankful, living life and just accepting that sometimes things happen for just no reason.  Good things, bad things, good reasons, bad reasons, and no reason at all.  Sometimes we ask WHY -- like: why in the WORLD are there 4 men on 4 horses coming down the walk on Independence Avenue?!? Sometimes we get answers. Sometimes we just should sit back see what comes our way.

Howdy, Madam.

ma, we're 'a going on a hunt

The kids have by now gotten into the idea of giving and getting ‘experiences’ for presents -- they love their gigantic stash of legos, toys, sports equipment, and books but when it comes to buying presents, it’s tricky anywhere but especially here.  And so...we introduced “the voucher.”

Our friends approached us first with an idea of giving a Bow Hunting voucher to FPFJ for his birthday and I think he was surprised at how quickly we agreed!  And so....Uncle Benjo and Thing got up at 4:30 the other Saturday morning and the two went off bow-hunting for impala.  The grown ups weren’t sure how it would go, neither did the little guy and so I went along as a chaperone/photographer.  FPFJ was totally awesome and cool as a cucumber and once I had the ‘lay of the land’ I was able to hang back and let the boys be boys. My concern was what kind of things they could encounter while tracking...since most of hunting is creeping around and trying to get close to one of the most skittish animals on the planet.  Creeping thru the tall grass in the bush is not high on my list of things I want the kids doing here in the land of fire ants, puff adders and black mambas.  Thankfully, the kid-friendly plan for the morning involved mostly creeping along open sandy paths with minimal stalking.  The grass and everything else is dry and crunchy and there is no step that could be taken thru the grass by clumsy humanoids, no matter how sneaky, that can possibly escape notice. ....CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH, CRACK, (swearing), CRUNCH... is kinda how 'sneaking' goes this time of year.  This was great from a mother's perspective and I was happy to have some time as the sun came up to again disappear into the little tiny creative space I have carved out for myself and play with the new camera -- again confirming my complete lack of natural ability to photograph animals or, as you’ll soon understand the above photo, predict animal behaviour. 

The best part of any adventure is the clothes and the gear.  This adventure was no excpetion.

"AH!  NOW I SEE!"

After a few frustrating exchanges "Can you see...?  Do you notice...?" Ben realizes that his hunting companion actually cannot see a thing! The grass is taller than him. he could be a foot away from a zebra and not notice until he got a hoof in the face. (he didn't, by the way!)   (It was amazing to see that the camouflage strategy for zebra actually is VERY effective in this setting.

On the right 'track' 

Off they go.....sneaking.....

This was when I had my close encounter with the sable.  The boys went off and I thought to myself.  "Let's see how close I can get to these Sable." Uh, crap.  I did NOT know that there was in this herd one semi-domestic sable: "Natalie."  this is the sequence I shot while I looked for something, ANYTHING to put between me and the sable.  And the photos I took before wondering where was ole Uncle Ben anyway? How loud would I have to yell for him to come running?  And...was he in fact just on the other side of this herd, peeing his pants while laughing hysterically at me running around a puny 5-inch diameter tree being pursued by an entuhiastic antelope with meter-long horns?  Thankfully after a few turns around the tree she lost interest and returned to her morning grazing.  I got my heart rate back to a reasonable level and backed myself right outta there. Good lesson. This property has on it a fully domesticated young sable, Rachael, and this darling, Natalie.  She is obviously NOT skittish around people but hangs with the herd.  Anyway, I was happy to re-join the boys who were just setting up to take a shot.  The shot missed and they headed over to see if they could find the arrow.  Because it hit a tree branch on the way, the trajectory was deflected, the animal was 'warned' and the arrow was easy to find.  By then, our friend Dan had arrived and they carried on together.  Here they are hatching a plan to head off the trail and into the long grass in hopes of the two hunters being able to flush out one particular animal toward Hunter #3.

The plan worked but not until we had to abandon the hunt and reunite with the the home-team.  This turned out to be a good thing because the shot that got off and that hit the animal was not a good one and the tracking was long and the death and 'dressing' of the impala was a bit gruesome. We escaped the gorey part of the hunting 'experience' and Ben has successfully recruited another young boy to his club. For now we are sticking to home-made stick and rubber-tubing 'gear' but I do anticipate the purchase of something 'proper' in our future.

"There's a lot more work to do!"

A photo from the archives. Taken at Seattle Center Feb 2008 with my mom and 'the baby' who is now  7 and is no longer a baby and who today watched the news sitting on the floor with his breakfast on his lap in his little green and blue school uniform asking again about the electoral college....with big brother sitting next to him (with no breakfast and no shirt on and hair STILL unbrushed) calculating when he will be able to cast his OWN vote for president, 2016.  I can tell that Thing 2 is instead thinking of when he can RUN for president.

That was a damn fine speech.  Where did that come from?  Where has THAT guy been hiding? 

Now GET BACK TO WORK!