It has been a CRAZY few weeks. Just a lot going on personally for all of us and professionally for Jimmy.
For the last week, Jimmy's 21 year-old niece and her friend have been visiting. It's been wonderful to have them here and to show them Bogota, but when they left with Jimmy at 6:20am for the airport and Mac left at 6:40am for school, I have to admit that I loved having an empty house all to myself (knowing that with just one week of school left, there will be no more empty house for me for the next couple months!).
For enjoying some peace and quiet, in blissful solitude, I am truly thankful!
Showing posts with label Visits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Visits. Show all posts
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
feeling a little sorry for myself
1. Jimmy "had to go" to Key West for a conference this week. The weather right now in Key West according to weather.com: 82 degrees and Fair. The weather right now in Bogota according to weather.com: 55 degrees and Mostly Cloudy. It would be "mostly cloudy" right now because there can surely be no water left in the heavens after what has poured down on this city in the last 24 hours.
2. God is apparently busy making more rain to replace those empty heavens because weather.com calls for rain all day tomorrow here.
3. Jimmy's in Key West, and I am not.
4. The whole country is flooded and has created devastating losses for a lot of people who didn't have a lot to lose in the first place. I realize I'm being entirely trivial about this so please forgive this rant in the midst of such devastation for so many people: the truck with our shipment out of storage was enroute from the port in Cartagena today (for delivery at my apartment on Friday), but the floods messed up a bridge and the truck can't get through until the bridge is repaired. There is obviously no detour route, and the truck has gone back to Cartagena to wait in a dry storage area. Which means the serving stuff I need for Thanksgiving won't be here by Thanksgiving. Again, this is absolutely petty in the big scheme of things - and I do understand that - but if you knew how we'd been battling against stupid people in Washington, DC who aren't able to do their jobs which means this shipment is arriving more than 2 months after it should have been here, then you might feel just a teensy bit of sympathy for me.
5. I think I have whatever that disorder is when you don't see the sun and it's rainy all the time and you get depressed and feel sorry for yourself.
6. Jimmy's on his third trip to the US in 3 months (and has traveled within Colombia at least once every other week since August), and I've left Bogota one time to go to Cartagena for 3 days. I might also have cabin fever besides the disorder in #5.
7. There is interminable construction next door and it's making me crazy. I hear a saw all day long from 7:30am to 5:30pm.
8. I have an earache in my right ear. This, of course, is undiagnosed but it hurts. Add that to ailments in #5 and #6.
9. Did I mention it's been raining nonstop and it's sunny in Key West?
But there are good things that I need to concentrate on:
1. I've met a couple awesome women recently that I love being around.
2. Mac is loving school. He also had a playdate with a new (non-school) friend that went perfectly. They played for close to 6 hours with nary the first bit of bickering or cross words. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.
3. I cooked all day yesterday in anticipation of friends visiting next week and Thanksgiving. My freezer now has 10 cups of cooked chicken ready for stuff like quesadillas and chicken pot pie; 20 cups of homemade tomato sauce; and 30 cups of chicken broth. I can obviously make as much cornbread dressing and gravy as I want to for Thanksgiving with all that broth. Oh, and I made two cheesecakes for the freezer. I feel like eating one right now by myself.
4. I didn't have Spanish today, which, sadly, makes me inordinately happy.
5. Mac's 8th birthday is on Saturday and he is infectiously excited.
6. We have friends coming to town next week and we are soooo excited. They'll be here for Thanksgiving and Mac's birthday party and we feel so blessed to have them here for both events.
I'm going to eat some chocolate. That won't make the rain disappear but it might make me feel better....
2. God is apparently busy making more rain to replace those empty heavens because weather.com calls for rain all day tomorrow here.
3. Jimmy's in Key West, and I am not.
4. The whole country is flooded and has created devastating losses for a lot of people who didn't have a lot to lose in the first place. I realize I'm being entirely trivial about this so please forgive this rant in the midst of such devastation for so many people: the truck with our shipment out of storage was enroute from the port in Cartagena today (for delivery at my apartment on Friday), but the floods messed up a bridge and the truck can't get through until the bridge is repaired. There is obviously no detour route, and the truck has gone back to Cartagena to wait in a dry storage area. Which means the serving stuff I need for Thanksgiving won't be here by Thanksgiving. Again, this is absolutely petty in the big scheme of things - and I do understand that - but if you knew how we'd been battling against stupid people in Washington, DC who aren't able to do their jobs which means this shipment is arriving more than 2 months after it should have been here, then you might feel just a teensy bit of sympathy for me.
5. I think I have whatever that disorder is when you don't see the sun and it's rainy all the time and you get depressed and feel sorry for yourself.
6. Jimmy's on his third trip to the US in 3 months (and has traveled within Colombia at least once every other week since August), and I've left Bogota one time to go to Cartagena for 3 days. I might also have cabin fever besides the disorder in #5.
7. There is interminable construction next door and it's making me crazy. I hear a saw all day long from 7:30am to 5:30pm.
8. I have an earache in my right ear. This, of course, is undiagnosed but it hurts. Add that to ailments in #5 and #6.
9. Did I mention it's been raining nonstop and it's sunny in Key West?
But there are good things that I need to concentrate on:
1. I've met a couple awesome women recently that I love being around.
2. Mac is loving school. He also had a playdate with a new (non-school) friend that went perfectly. They played for close to 6 hours with nary the first bit of bickering or cross words. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.
3. I cooked all day yesterday in anticipation of friends visiting next week and Thanksgiving. My freezer now has 10 cups of cooked chicken ready for stuff like quesadillas and chicken pot pie; 20 cups of homemade tomato sauce; and 30 cups of chicken broth. I can obviously make as much cornbread dressing and gravy as I want to for Thanksgiving with all that broth. Oh, and I made two cheesecakes for the freezer. I feel like eating one right now by myself.
4. I didn't have Spanish today, which, sadly, makes me inordinately happy.
5. Mac's 8th birthday is on Saturday and he is infectiously excited.
6. We have friends coming to town next week and we are soooo excited. They'll be here for Thanksgiving and Mac's birthday party and we feel so blessed to have them here for both events.
I'm going to eat some chocolate. That won't make the rain disappear but it might make me feel better....
Monday, October 11, 2010
baking at high altitude, part 2
Last week I made a promise to myself that I would bake a carrot cake from scratch before my dearest Brazilian friend in the world got here last Friday afternoon. When Gisele eats my carrot cake, she makes me feel like I'm Martha Stewart (except without that pesky jail sentence and the snooty attitude).
I did some research and between what I learned from my research and an email that my friend Trisha who used to live here sent me, I was armed and ready.
The problem is that when you've been taught to bake by a mother who taught home economics for a very, very long time, you learn that baking is a science, a chemical process that requires the exact precise combination of leavening agents and flour and liquid and whatever else goes into such scientific chemical processes. (Science was not my forte.)
So if a recipe calls for one cup of flour, I was taught to spoon the flour into a dry measuring cup (a cup for dry ingredients, not a not-wet cup) and then level it off with the flat side of a knife. That's how I've always baked, namely because I don't have confidence in my baking abilities or skills to just add a little of this or a pinch of that.
So you can imagine how against the grain of me it goes to read these high-altitude adjustments that say things like "add 1-4 tablespoons of flour to your recipe". I'm sorry, but how do I know if I need 1 or 4 more tablespoons? You also have to add another egg, add less sugar, add less baking soda and powder, add less oil, and add more liquid. It's all incredibly and completely imprecise and that makes me crazy.
The other thing that makes no sense to me is that you have to add more flour and more liquid. Shouldn't those just cancel each other out and take you back to square one?
Anyway, I made the carrot cake with great trepidation. It might not be the best carrot cake I've ever made but it was pretty good if I do say so myself. Sadly, to repeat it will require a stroke of good luck or heavenly blessing because I just sort of willy-nilly measured and added and took away.
I will relish in this baking victory because it may not be mine again any time soon!
P.S. I will post soon on our amazing weekend with Gisele and Flavio, including what was probably the best meal I've ever had in my life at a restaurant here called Criterion. To start salivating now, go to www.criterion.com.co ! We had the tasting menu and it was quite simply divine. More to come!
I did some research and between what I learned from my research and an email that my friend Trisha who used to live here sent me, I was armed and ready.
The problem is that when you've been taught to bake by a mother who taught home economics for a very, very long time, you learn that baking is a science, a chemical process that requires the exact precise combination of leavening agents and flour and liquid and whatever else goes into such scientific chemical processes. (Science was not my forte.)
So if a recipe calls for one cup of flour, I was taught to spoon the flour into a dry measuring cup (a cup for dry ingredients, not a not-wet cup) and then level it off with the flat side of a knife. That's how I've always baked, namely because I don't have confidence in my baking abilities or skills to just add a little of this or a pinch of that.
So you can imagine how against the grain of me it goes to read these high-altitude adjustments that say things like "add 1-4 tablespoons of flour to your recipe". I'm sorry, but how do I know if I need 1 or 4 more tablespoons? You also have to add another egg, add less sugar, add less baking soda and powder, add less oil, and add more liquid. It's all incredibly and completely imprecise and that makes me crazy.
The other thing that makes no sense to me is that you have to add more flour and more liquid. Shouldn't those just cancel each other out and take you back to square one?
Anyway, I made the carrot cake with great trepidation. It might not be the best carrot cake I've ever made but it was pretty good if I do say so myself. Sadly, to repeat it will require a stroke of good luck or heavenly blessing because I just sort of willy-nilly measured and added and took away.
I will relish in this baking victory because it may not be mine again any time soon!
P.S. I will post soon on our amazing weekend with Gisele and Flavio, including what was probably the best meal I've ever had in my life at a restaurant here called Criterion. To start salivating now, go to www.criterion.com.co ! We had the tasting menu and it was quite simply divine. More to come!
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