Thankfully

There wasn't a strike. The evening news channel I watch didn't mention anything on Thursday, actually, and then Friday when it was apparent that it didn't happen, they said the government appointed a committee to review a report submitted by the petroleum dealers to see what if any increases or changes will be made.

In other news....

Thursday I wish I had my camera with me. The service was nice. I marched with a grade 4 class from the town hall to the Catholic church. When we got there and were finding seats, there wasn't room for me with VF Primary students, but then the District Education Officer's secretary told me I was an invited guest, so I got to sit up front. I hadn't received my invitation due to some confusion at the suboffice, but I'm glad I showed up! There was lots of singing, certificates given to teachers who had been in the profession for 30 years or more, and speeches by several people. I got to sit just behind Dr. Kenny Anthony, our district representative and former prime minister. I also met a former PCV who served in 2005-07, whose name I've heard in the different schools with great esteem--she introduced character education to the District 6 schools. And of course there was "snack" (a full lunch for me!) after the service for the invited guests.

I felt like a minor celebrity all day, from the seating to the food to children (mostly as usual) waving me and shouting my name. Most adorably there was a little preschool girl outside the grocery store who saw me and said loudly "Mummy that's the one--" and then much more quietly "Mummy that's the one who was at the town hall!"

Yesterday I worked on a farm not too far away. This farmer is just starting out, and intends for his crops to be as organic as possible, so there were lots of weeds to weed and such. They fed us a delicious rice dish for lunch, and we all got coconuts to drink. I don't usually like coconut water, but after working a few hours weeding and whacking at taller grasses with a cutlass (a machete), it was excellent. It's a perfect refresher, better than water, because it has electrolytes (like Gatorade, etc) but few calories.

After the workday at the farm I washed up (walking home a woman asked me, "Did you fall?" because I was covered in dirt) and headed into town to see the show at Primary. I did get some pictures from that though. One great part was when a singer was singing "Try to make a platinum song, chicken back boy" to the tune of "Duffle Bag Boy" by Playaz Circle. The kids got to shout the last three words, they loved it.

An exciting couple of days, and this next week will be busy in good ways, too.

The sweet smell of petrol...

...may be stopped for a while soon.

Actually, it's sort of exciting and very annoying at the same time. The country's petrol dealers may go on strike starting Friday, because they couldn't reach an agreement with the government, which currently controls the price of gas.



I'm wondering if us PCVs will be called to consolidate, so I might get things together in a bag just in case. I'll definitely be stocking up on food tomorrow while I'm in town, although I may need to stick with foods that don't need to be cooked on the stove, since I'm almost out of kerosene. In order to get kerosene, I need to go into town with the empty tank, exchange and pay for a full tank, which weighs around 30 lbs (actually I have no idea how much it weighs--but it's a lot to carry). If there's no transport, I can't get a new tank of kerosene, and I can't get a full tank without an empty one to exchange it.

Now I'm really wishing I had bought a coal pot already.

Edit: I forgot to mention, there's an ecumenical service at the Catholic church in town tomorrow morning in preparation for Independence Day this Sunday. I'm sort of excited about that, too.

A fun Valentine's Day

On Friday I was able to leave work early (sort of unfortunately--the Ministry of Education hasn't been able to go in and make Belle Vue Combined's computers compatible, install software, or set up a network, so I wasn't teaching IT classes as planned), so I went and bought some headbands, including a nice sparkly red one. I needed it for Valentine's Day.

Here for V Day people wear red and white. I tried asking Fae why, what it stood for, but there didn't seem to be any particular meaning to it. I actually have (had) no red articles of clothing whatsoever, so I bought the headband, and also wore pink and white. Good enough.

In the morning yesterday Berney and I got on Skype and chatted and watched Shawshank Redemption together. It was fun. I also gave him an awesome "card" that I had been working on for the past week:

Later Fae and I met up at the grocery store, and we came back here to make pizza and white chocolate coffee brownies. The pizza had fried eggplant on one side and tuna on the other, in addition to bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, and spinach underneath the cheese. Everything tasted really good. We watched Mamma Mia, which was kind of awful but definitely fun.

I missed out on meeting up with some other volunteers to hang out in Soufriere, but I had fun anyways. :)

Today I cleaned my house more thoroughly than I had been in the past month and a half, and then I built a spaceship!

Molasses Candy Cookies!

So I've been reading cooking forums and blogs and watching the Food Network a lot in the past few months, and one thing that everyone agrees on is that though most things cooked don't need to be measured exactly, baking does.

Well, I can't help it. I like to experiment. So I do measure...at first. Then I add something that changes the recipe and then I have to add more of this or that...well, at least other people don't have to eat my baking.

Well, except when I'm baking specifically because people are coming over.

Hmm, that sure isn't what the original recipe said....


....well, everyone keeps going back for 2nds, 3rds, 5ths of the cookies, so I guess they're alright.

Actually they're great. I love thick, soft cookies, and that's exactly what these are. The molasses means that the dough itself isn't too sweet, but the heath and white chocolate bits help to bring more sweetness into the overall cookie. It's pretty much perfectly balanced.

Molasses Candy Cookies
Ingredients
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 tspn salt
1 tspn baking soda
1 tspn baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 3/4 cups light brown sugar
1/3 cup molasses
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups chopped Heath Bar pieces (Eight 1.4 ounce bars)
1/2 cup white chocolate chips (well, I chopped squares for it, since they don't sell w.choc chips here)
1/2 chopped almonds

Directions
1. In a medium mixing bowl combine flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda. In a separate bowl, combine heath, white chocolate chips, and almonds.
2. In a large mixing bowl, cream (haha, yeah right, like I have a mixer) the butter, add the sugar and molasses. Mix it up all good! Add eggs one at a time, and vanilla.
3. Add flour mix and heath/w.choc/almond mix alternately, in thirds. Make sure everything is well combined, and the flour isn't sticking to the candy-ish bits. Pop that thang in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. I put it in there for almost and hour and a half.
4. Preheat oven to 375 F. Spoon 2" balls of the dough onto a greased cookie sheet, setting 2" apart. Bake cookies for 9 minutes, remove, let cool, and transfer to a plate or a cooling rack or something. Eat!

Makes about 3 dozen.

If you don't like soft light fluffy thick cookies, first of all I don't understand you, second, you should probably omit the baking powder and only use about 2 3/4 cups flour.

The original recipe I was referencing didn't have molasses, so I thought I'd substitute that for some sugar, then it was too bitter so I added enough sugar, and the 2 1/2 cups flour didn't make the dough dough-y enough, so I added more flour. So this recipe is kind of guessed at, but the measurements should be about right.

I'll add pics when Fae brings my camera back. :)

Good Food, Good Friends...

That's what life is all about, right? Well, almost. :)

As most of you know, this past Wednesday was my birthday. I'm now 23, a rather unexciting number, other than being a prime. Many thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. Diana sent me this pic, I think it sums things up pretty well:

That morning was off to a sour start...I was volunteered to sub for a teacher who was absent. I actually took that same class on Monday, and that went over pretty well, so I figured it wouldn't be too hard. Unfortunately, the children's notebooks were unavailable because the keys to the cabinet were also absent. So though I tried just going over the homework, it was extremely difficult to get the attention of the class, and before lunch my voice was already sore from trying to be heard over the talking. However, even before lunch the principal came up and had the class distributed throughout the other first grade classes (which is what's usually done when a teacher is absent). After lunch (which the principal bought for me, some tasty soup) I and Sister Mary subbed a different class who had maths assignments, and that was rather pleasant.

I came home and talked with Berney on Skype while making cookie dough--see above for the recipe! Fae came over around 5, and we hung out and watched TV and baked cookies until Randy, Nethelia, and Ellery also joined us. It was very nice to have just a few close friends over for my birthday--it wasn't stressful trying to host many people, and it wasn't depressing having no one over. Everyone loved the cookies (the sparkling wine less so, since it was really cheap).

I also now understand the cake thing. Nethelia brought me a pretty little cake (it's delicious!) that she made. Its about 3-4 inches tall, and the circumfrence of a tea saucer. I offered some, but no one took. I had noticed at previous birthday parties that cakes were present, but the fancy cakes weren't cut and shared among the guests. Honestly I thought that it seemed greedy, but the other night it was explained to me: The birthday person is given a small cake to last them the entire month. This makes it very special, since it's just for you and you're not obligated to share it. People (other than children) don't receive gifts for birthdays, but they are given a fantastic little cake that should last 30 days if you portion it right.


This week has been very busy.

Saturday I went up to Castries to pick up a couple packages from my mom! She sent tax-related documents, candy, Asimov books, and a very special (broken, but meant to be built again) spaceship. What a great gift for my birthday! (I've already started reading the next book in the Robot series.) I also was able to get my trimesterly report and my 6-month work plan done on the computer at the PC office.

Sunday I made soup. I made A LOT of soup. I have a decently large pot, and it was almost filled to the top. I had a bowl, fixed it, had a little more, then put half of it in tupperware to freeze. That took four containers. I was able to push more of the non-frozen stuff to the guests on Wednesday, so now I only have 9 more servings :) I'm proud of this soup because it tasted so much better than my previous soup (though it looks largely the same, I guess!). It has carrots, onions, chives, parsely, cabbage, okra, christophen (chayote squash), pumpkin, green fig, rice, chicken stock, and some chicken bones and scraps. I was especially proud because, as I said, I had a bowl and then I was able to fix it, adding more salt and a couple spices that I thought would round it out. It worked! It's a very filling and decently tasty soup, without using the pre-packaged seasoning that pretty much just adds MSG (which isn't a bad thing, I'm just glad I could make it completely from scratch!).

Monday afterschool I had to run up to Castries for an errand, Tuesday I went to Piaye to check out Jess's afterschool program, Wednesday was the birthday stuff, Thursday I tried to go meet the counselor at Camus A (unsuccessfully), and today I did meet with her (very successfully!). Now I have a free weekend before in-service training up past Castries. So I'm trying to catch up on little things that I should have done earlier. Like this post! :)