Stroller Brigade
People laugh – or worse, look like I am crazy – when I tell them living in Kuwait is not unlike living in Alaska in terms of climate. When the climate gets extreme – too cold has the same impact as too hot – people stay at home more, going from their heated/chilled homes to their heated/chilled cars to the heated/chilled stores and malls or theatres. When the milder weather comes, everyone spends every minute they can outside.
In Kuwait, there are groups that head for the malls early in the morning for some serious walking when it is too hot to walk outside.
In Seattle, I ran into another group of serious walkers, but here, they are avoiding the rain and cold. When you see the stroller brigade – and there were between fifteen and twenty women with their babies – you had better get out of the way! These are some serious strollers!
Thankgiving Invitation
Adventure Man and I will be attending different Thanksgiving Events this year, the first time ever. Here is the invitation to the event he will attend:
Thanksgiving!
•HEAR YE! HEAR YE!
•A THANKSGIVING CELEBRATION IS AT HAND
•A TIME TO GET TOGETHER TO GIVE THANKSGIVING, TO VISIT, TO CELEBRATE AND OF COURSE, TO EAT
•COME ONE AND ALL, COME EARLY TO THE THANKSGIVING CELEBRATION (usually the gathering starts around 9:00am)
•EVERYONE IS WELCOME AND BRING ANYONE YOU CAN GET TO COME ALONG
•COME EARLY, STAY LATE
•WE’LL HAVE THANKSGIVING LUNCH BETWEEN
1:00-1:30 PM
•THERE WILL BE ENOUGH FOOD PREPARED EARLY, IN CASE THE CHILDREN NEED TO EAT
•HOWEVER, THERE WILL BE PLENTY TO SNACK ON BEFORE THE MEALTIME
•KIDS BRING YOUR BATS, SOFTBALLS, KICKBALLS, FOOTBALLS, ROLLER SKATES, BIKES, SCOOTERS, ROPES OR WHATEVER
•Stay and Enjoy the leftovers for supper!!
WHEN: THANKSGIVING DAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2007
(Oh what fun!)
Mom’s Fruit Cake Updated
The basics are below, and the basics make the fruit cake. This year, once again, I am alcohol-less in Kuwait, as alcohol is illegal here, but during Ramadan I stocked up on some other local specialities – the glaceed cherries in red and green, the golden currants from Iran, the tiny red berries from Iran, delicious dried peaches, chunks of dried papaya, dried apricots, and the juiciest prunes I have ever tasted. Thanks to a care package, I will also be using fresh, delicious Texas pecans! Wooo Hooooo!
Every year is different, depending on where I am!
Here is the original blog entry, which to date has been one of the all-time statistical wonders. Thanks, Mom!
Wooo Hooooooo! The fruitcakes are in the oven, and already the house smells wonderful. I’ve been making these cakes since I got married. I don’t think I have missed a year, but I may have. I grew up smelling these delicious cakes every winter. I don’t think my Mom makes them every year any more. I wish I were close enough to pop one into her refrigerator for their holidays.
Mom’s Fruit Cake
Even people who think they HATE fruit cake like this fruit cake. It has a secret ingredient – chocolate!
This is the original recipe. I remember cutting the dates and prunes with scissors when I was little; now you can buy dates and prunes without pits and chop them in the food processor – a piece of cake!
1 cup boiling water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup lard or butter
1 T. cinnamon
1 t. cloves
3 Tablespoons chocolate powder
1/4 cup jelly
1 cup seeded raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup candied citron
1/2 cup cut prunes
1/2 cup cut dates
Put all in a pan on stove and bring to a boil. Boil for three minutes. Let cool. Add:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
Flavor with lemon
Bake at 350° in loaf pans for one hour. Makes 2 normal bread loaf sized cakes.
My variations: I put in about three times the fruit, the difference primarily in the candied citron – I prefer using whole candied cherries, because they are so pretty when the loafs are cut. This recipe doubles, or quadruples with no problems.
Pans: Mom used to line all the pans with brown paper and grease the paper. That’s a lot of trouble.
I grease the pans, then dust with more of the chocolate powder. Use a good quality chocolate, not cocoa.
When the cakes come out of the oven, let them cool for ten minutes, loosen them with a knife, then they will shake out easily. Let continue to cool until they are totally cool, then wrap in plastic wrap, with several layers, then foil, then seal in a sealable plastic bag. Let them age a couple months in a corner of your refrigerator.
I never make these the same any two years in a row. This is the first year, ever, that I won’t be using any brandy – alcohol in Kuwait being against the law. Yeh, I have some friends who laugh and say “you can get it anywhere!” but we made a decision to obey the law. Only rarely do I regret it . . . sigh . . .fruitcakes really need brandy.
Update: If you are in a country where brandy is available, and if you want to use brandy, here is how to use it in this recipe. You know how raisins get all dried out and taste yucky in fruitcakes? The night before you intend to make the fruitcakes, take all the raisins you intend to use (depending on how many fruitcakes you intend to make) and put them in a glass container. Pour brandy over them, to cover. Microwave just to the boiling point. Let stand in the microwave overnight.
The next day, you can drain that brandy and use it in a stew or something, and in the meanwhile, you now have plump, juicy raisins to use in your fruitcake, and just a hint of brandy flavor. Yummmm!
Small Waist, Big Bum
Some of these studies are just too much. This study claims the results show that the curvier a woman is, the smarter she, and her children, are. From today’s BBC Health News.
Women with curvy figures are likely to be brighter than waif-like counterparts and may well produce more intelligent offspring, a US study suggests.
Researchers studied 16,000 women and girls and found the more voluptuous performed better on cognitive tests – as did their children.
The bigger the difference between a woman’s waist and hips the better.
Researchers writing in Evolution and Human Behaviour speculated this was to do with fatty acids found on the hips.
In this area, the fat is likely to be the much touted Omega-3, which could improve the woman’s own mental abilities as well as those of her child during pregnancy.
You can read the entire article HERE.
The Magic of Miso
(Image courtesy mediafocus.com)
Growing up on the west coast of the USA is like growing up in an international zone. When I was very little, in Alaska, we had lots of Scandinavian foods, along with – no, I am not kidding – mooseburgers, deer, fresh shrimp and king crab, lots of clams, and of course, salmon and halibut. Our Dads would go out in hunting season, and alternated garages for the cleaning and cutting up of the deer. We would get the eyes or tail to take to school for show-and-tell. Yeh, it sounds gross now, but we were kids, and it was a part of our life.
We waited to be 10 years old, when we could go to Rifle Club and learn to shoot. You can’t imagine how delighted I am to see a Women’s team in Kuwait, top-notch riflewomen!
In Seattle, there have always been huge communities of immigrants. One community, Ballard, is – or was – primarily Scandinavian, mostly Norwegian. (I had to look up the spelling on that one!) There is an area called Chinatown – the more politically correct call it the international district, and now, it is truly international, with Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Gambian, Nigerian, Cambodian, etc.
I don’t know exactly when I came to associate miso soup with good health, but last night, I had a small dinner planned, and Adventure Man said “Why don’t you let me bring you some miso soup?” He knows miso soup is one of my comfort foods when I am sick.
I was so sick, nothing sounded good to me. Better, though, that he bring me something than that I have to get up and cook!
He brought the miso soup. I didn’t even want to eat it, but I did. Then, before he had even finished his dinner, I excused myself, went back to bed and slept for three hours, really slept. Until then, I had been sleeping fitfully, waking often, never feeling rested.
At 10:30 I woke up and felt . . . better! I chatted with Adventure Man, took care of a few things, then went back to bed and slept peacefully through the night.
Today – I am not totally well, but I am mostly well. Thanks be to God, and . . . Miso soup!
Paying the Price
I had two wonderful days, Thursday and Friday, out and about all day in this wonderful Kuwait weather. Saturday was out again for a short time with Adventure Man and felt a tickle in my throat. No big deal, I figure it is just allergies, or the change in seasons; I drank some ginger tea and figured that would be the end of it.
Wrong!
Yesterday, it was hanging on, getting stronger. Here come the sneezes, the swollen sinuses, the watery bleary eyes, the sneezing and the coughing. Having a cold totally grosses me out. I’m not a person who gets dramatically and romantically ill, lying beautifully in bed while people bring me hot drinks and speak to me in soft voices. I look terrible! I want this cold gone now! I’ve upped the arsenel to Strepticils, Zinc tablets, Cranberry juice and antihistimines. It doesn’t matter; I am a wreck.
I’m better during the day, it’s night time that gets me – I wake up choking and coughing, my sinuses hurt, my nose is running. . . and I sleep fitfully, with weird dreams, so sometimes I can’t tell if I am dreaming or awake.
The Qatteri Cat faithfully follows me everywhere I go. I am sleeping in the guest bedroom so Adventure Man doesn’t have to suffer through this with me, but QC just makes comforting noises and snuggles up to me.
I have a lot to do this week. Please keep me in prayer for a speedy recovery!
St Anthony, St Anthony, Please look around
I am in a muddle. I have put something in “a safe place” which at the time it seemed a very logical, very clever place, and now I can’t find it.
There is an old verse that keeps running through my head.
St. Anthony, St Anthony, please look around,
Something is lost and must be found.
So this morning, I looked up who St. Anthony was, after all, I need his help. St. Anthony was a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi, and was sometimes called the “hammer of heritics.” He is reputed to be the patron saint of lost things because a valuable book went missing and he prayed for it’s return. As he was praying, the person who had the book saw an apparition of St. Anthony, and quickly returned the missing book, or so the legend goes.
I found this on a Catholic Education Page by Fr. William Saunders where you can find more information on St. Anthony.
Bedbug Renaissance Inn
We had just come back to Germany from our son’s graduation from law school, and woke up the next morning with welts – we didn’t know what they were. All we knew is suddenly, we had red itchy welts, and I was allergic to whatever they were.
We were lucky – we got in to see a doctor right away, and he told us what they were and what to do, and we did it and we never had another problem. He also told us that he was seeing this problem more and more – that many hotels have extra guests they never tell you about, even the very best hotels. (Our poor kitty – we had blamed her, we thought maybe she had brought in fleas, and it wasn’t her at all, it was hitch-hikers from Florida.)
What we learned from this truly awful experience is that bedbug infestations are happening everywhere. It’s something no one talks about out of shame, but with DDT off the market, and increasingly warm climates, they are on the increase.
To this day, I wash my sheets in hot hot water, and dry them on hot. And I think twice when I say to children, as is common in the USA “sleep tight, and don’t let the bed bugs bite!”
From AOL News:
(Nov. 7) – First come the bites, amazingly itchy, raised red welts that appear, literally, overnight. Then, you might notice scarlet spots on your sheets from smashed bugs or perhaps clusters of little black dots that you assume are dirt but are in fact constellations of fecal matter.
And one day, you might wake up in the wee hours of the morning, flip on the lights and find red bugs, slightly bigger than ticks, crawling on your sheets, pillows and legs.
Welcome to the most retro pest of the 21st century, the bedbug. The bugs, which were thought to be wiped out by powerful pesticides such as DDT 30 years ago, are back and infesting major urban areas, suburbia and the heartland.
You can read the entire horrifying story at AOL Health News.
USA Today’s List of How to Cope with a Bedbug Infestation:
Coping With Bedbugs: Advice From Experts
The best rule of thumb for dealing with bedbugs? Try not to get them in the first place.
Otherwise, read on:
Be careful where you put your suitcase when you travel. “These guys are fantastic hitchhikers,” says the University of Maryland’s Michael Raupp. “If you have a luggage rack with metal racks, put your suitcase on that.”
Check behind a hotel headboard. That’s one of their favorite spots, Raupp says. Pull back the comforter and sheets and look for the fecal stains on the mattress seams and ticking. Shine a penlight behind the headboard and look for dark fecal stains.
If you do wake up with red welts, assume the worst. “At that point, when you go home, all laundry goes into a trash bag outside, and then right into a washing machine on a hot cycle, and then a clothes dryer,” says the University of Kentucky’s Michael F. Potter. “As little as five or 10 minutes kills everything on high heat. Cold will not kill the eggs and not all the adults.”
Don’t pull mattresses and dressers off the street. Steer clear of yard sales or flea markets. And don’t ever buy used bedding.
If you do get them, don’t use a bomb or spray, which will only scatter them through your home. “Find a good pest-control company. This is not one where you buy bug spray and battle it yourself,” Potter says.
In many cases, pros suggest getting rid of your box spring and mattress, or if you can’t, using a bug-proof zippered mattress cover that traps the buggers inside for at least a year.
Source: USA Today
Ayam Zakat
My niece, Little Diamond in a comment on a previous post reminded me of the “cat containment center,” also called the cat house, that the Qatteri Cat once inhabited so that he could spend time in the garden when we weren’t outside. It had three levels he could climb up to and sleep on, and a long run to the exit. He didn’t like being contained, but he liked being outdoors enough to put up with it.
Little Diamond helped me put it together when it arrived. Little Diamond has a great big brain, she can find anything on the internet in four seconds flat, including all the lyrics to Put the Lime in the Coconut. All we have to do is mention wanting to know something, and she finds it. She also forwards all kinds of fascinating reading for me. She is SMART.
She is not so smart about putting things together. Like she said we didn’t need to look at the instructions, which were sort of in Chinese anyway, but I am a read the instructons kind of woman. Our first try was not so good. We had to resort to looking at the instructions. We finally got it together, but it never was quite right. It worked, however, well enough.
It even had a flag for the top.
Little Diamond speaks Arabic fluently. I only stumble around, but you know how when you are learning a language there are words that sound like other words, or you make jokes about the language that would make no sense to the people speaking that language but make perfect sense to the learner? (I have heard that the English word “unique” will send you into gales of laughter). Little Diamond and Adventure Man love puns, especially in Arabic. We can be rolling on the floor over things that will make YOU native Arabic speaker roll your eyes.
“On the flag” suggested Little Diamond, with a perfectly straight face, “we need to write ‘Ayam Zakat'”! and then we both laughed so hard we rolled on the grass with tears in our eyes, howling with laughter.
In Arabic, Ayam Zakat makes no sense at all. Ayam means something like times and zakat is charity. When you say it in English, however . . . it is the perfect flag for the Qatteri Cat’s house.
You can find the Cat Containment Center (condo) and all kinds of other items for entertaining and transporting cats at Midnight Pass/Kittywalk
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