New Blog!

I'm making a new side blog for drawing. I want to do at least one drawing a week, but I usually need inspiration.

Head over to Drawing Things Out, tell me what to draw, and I'll draw it!

Double Dessert Recipes!

I haven't posted any recipes lately; this must be remedied immediately.

First we have an upside down cake I made for July 4th, followed by some rich Milo brownies.

For the Fourth of July, I wanted to make something that said summer to me. I remembered to a few years ago when I made an incredibly messy layered pound cake with peach filling. It was delicious but not quite right for this event. Besides the peaches I found at Super J were just about the sorriest stone fruit I've ever met. The whole ordeal made me really want some ripe, warm, perfect Hill Country peaches out of a paper bag. That'll have to wait a week, though. Nevertheless, people enjoyed the cake, especially fellow PCV Ann! This post is dedicated to her.

The spiced peach filling for the upside down cake can work as preserves on its own. You can put it in a sterilized jar for long shelf life, or put it in clean tupperware in the fridge to keep for a week or so.

Super Spiced Peach Upside Down Cake
Cake
3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs

2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp sugar
1-2 peaches, sliced into eighths
lemon juice

Preheat oven to 375F.

Sift flour with sugar, baking powder, and salt. Stir butter to soften, then mix it with dry ingredients. Add milk and vanilla. Mix until all flour is dampened.

Beat batter 2 minutes medium/300 strokes by hand. Add eggs, beat 1 minute/150 strokes more.

In one greased 8" round pan, pour a little more than 1/2 of the batter.

Heat 2 Tbsp butter and 2 Tbsp sugar in sauce pan until bubbly, pour into second greased 8" round pan. Arrange peach slices on top of this mix, sprinkle with lemon juice. Pour the rest of the cake batter on top.

Bake for 35 minutes, you know the regular cake/toothpick stuff. Let them cool, take a lime.

Spiced Peach Filling
3-5 peaches
1-2 packets of gelatin
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water (maybe a little more)
1-2 dried cloves
1 tsp cinnamon or 1 medium stick
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
orange peel
dash (or two) cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp lemon juice

To skin the peaches, dunk them in boiling water for 30-60 seconds. Let them cool a bit, and the peel should come off pretty easily. Dice them into 1/2" chunks.

Place diced peaches in a saucepan, sprinkle with gelatin, stir over low heat. Add sugar and water. If you have cheese cloth or something like that, tie the clove, orange peel and cinnamon stick in it, and put it in the saucepan. If not, be prepared to fish those out. Add ground cinnamon (if using that), nutmeg, and cayenne. Stir. Let this cook down some, about 15-20 minutes.

Remove from heat, remove clove, cinnamon stick, and orange peel. Add lemon juice, stir. Let cool completely.


COMBINE FORCES!
This works best if the cakes have had plenty of time to rest--I refrigerated mine almost immediately after they came out of the oven, but that made them denser than I would have liked. But chilling or freezing them before assembly is a good idea.

Get your plain cake upside down onto the serving dish. If your pan is greased well enough and the cake has rested and chilled, just pick it out upside down. Spread your filling on top of that, then take your peach upside down cake, turn it upside down, and put it on top. How lovely.


Milo Brownies
Oh my you're missing out if you've never had Milo!
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup Milo powder
1/4 cup flour
pinch salt

Grease medium sized pan, preheat oven to 350F.

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla, beat to combine well. In a separate bowl mix cocoa powder, Milo, flour, and salt. Slowly fold in dry ingredients to the wet. Mmm, doesn't that smell good?

Pour into your greased medium sized pan, bake 30-35 minutes, brownie/toothpick fun. I ended up having to leave it in for about 43 minutes, because my dish is deeper than I would like.

Let it cool! Oooh it smells good but let it cool. In fact, after you have some warm gooey brownie goodness, put it in the fridge, and it'll be even better the next day. Milo has vitamins and stuff, so you can pretend it's a good breakfast if you ignore all the sugar and butter in there!

Oh Noes!

Looks like I'm getting sick. Just earlier this week I was thinking about how I'm awesome for not getting sick since I've been here....Pride before a fall, I guess.

Maybe I shouldn't have hung out at the house of a friend who has the flu (coughfaehacksneeze). Though the chicken and mashed potatoes she made for me were absolutely fantastic.

The other night I made a tasty full meal with spicy baked flying fish, a baked sweet potato (half seasoned savorily, half sweetened for dessert), and a mini veggie casserole. I assure you, it all tasted much better than it looks:

Today I went up to Castries for a Barrier Analysis meeting, and it looks like we're on our way towards researching. We developed our questions and revised our goal, behaviour, and priority group. There are still a few things to do, but we're much closer than we were yesterday.

I'm currently on Easter break, and if I weren't getting sick I would make sure to go to all the church services this weekend. I'll try to make at least one of them, though. Probably on Sunday. I'll also try to check out the Carifta Games (esp since they're right here in Vieux Fort!).

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.

Exciting week

Last Saturday I went to the joint birthday party for Julius, Ellery, and her daughter Jovanni. I spent a lot of the time in Randy's room hanging with him and Fae, and watching Da Ali G Movie. After that I went out and hung out with the old people (they're my friends too), dancing and eating--"breakfast" was served just after midnight, and was what would normally be a weekend lunch spread. There was cake, and of course plenty to drink throughout the night. It was a great time, overall.

Earlier that afternoon I also got a package from my dad--a framed picture I gave to him a long time ago, and some Godiva chocolate bars. Packages are always very exciting :)

On Sunday I went to the movies with Fae, Randy, and a couple of his coworkers. It was a long trek up there, with waiting for people to get ready at each part (even I was a few minutes late getting to Fae's, but that wasn't much of a problem for anyone, since Randy wasn't ready for another half hour or so). We watched Transporter 3 (I've seen the first one, and I guess there was a second?). The experience was pretty much exactly like going to a theater in the States, except that the hot dog I had was actually good (and the bun, especially). Unfortunately, the movie was at 7, so I didn't get back until late, so for two nights in a row I ended up only getting a few hours of sleep. This week I still haven't been able to catch up on it yet, but perhaps tonight.

Today was exciting because I met with Sister Mary, a nun who works assisting schools all over the south and west of the island. Luckily for me, she lives in the convent here in Vieux Fort, and what's more, she wants to start an afterschool program! So today we met and talked about what we expect out of it, who and what we'll need, and we'll meet again on Monday. I'm really glad she's here, since this is something I've been wanting to do but have been feeling too stretched between three schools all week to get some time to really get it going. Her goal is to have it running by mid-February, which is a tall order, but I'll do my best to make sure it happens.

Winter Break Synopsis

Wow, it's been a while. Sorry about the lack of posts lately; the holidays found me much busier than I had anticipated.

It was enjoyable, though. I hung out with PCVs and local friends pretty often. I also made lots of tasty tasty food. Recipes to come.

I hiked plenty--Morne Le Blanc in Laborie, the Saltibus waterfalls, up Moule-a-Chique in Vieux Fort to look at the light house, and even the Edmund Forest Trail across to the Des Cartiers. This last one was pretty much across almost the widest (not longest) part of the island. It was about four hours, but it was the most fantastic thing ever. I hadn't been in the middle of the rainforest before, so the plants and scenes were just amazing. We also saw lots of the St. Lucia Parrots (called Jako in Kweyol).

Christmas I spent with my host family. I went to Midnight Mass with Julius and Nethelia, then to their friend's house afterwards. The next day I joined them for Christmas lunch and got to meet their son that lives in Canada--he surprised Nethelia, she didn't know he was coming at all! (although his brother Randy knew.) After lunch some friends came over, and Nethelia and I joined them in what is called "house to house": one person in a group calls up someone at a nearby house, sees if they're home and have something to offer to eat, and then everyone goes to that house. Lather, rinse, repeat. I met some new people and got to see some friends I already knew, and got to have lots of tasty food, from ham to cakes (lots of cakes!) and plenty of drink, including a great peanut punch at Ellery's house. It was a great way to spend Christmas.

The following Sunday I finally cooked lunch for Julius and Nethelia ("long overdue," she said). I made a Tex-Mex offering, with tortillas, guacamole, chicken, refried beans, cheese, and salad--a good spread for tacos, of course. They enjoyed it, especially the guacamole. People here eat lots of avocado ("pear"), but usually don't mix it with anything except cassava flour ("farin").

New Year's Eve I spend in Rodney Bay with some other PCVs. We had a big ol' spaghetti dinner with several wines and sparkling juices to accompany, then we headed down to the beach to watch the fireworks at midnight. We hung around for a long time, and I didn't end up sleeping until about 5am!

The first week of school brought some new things, too. I have a new schedule now with the Infant School, since some students switched classes. At the Primary school I am now co-teaching with the Special Needs teacher, Miss Vigie ("veezhay"). At Belle Vue I'm still currently helping out the principal in various capacities (typing things for her, providing a sounding board for ideas, designing things), although she has me signed up to introduce computers to preschool children (this may change, we'll see).

At the Primary School, in addition to helping Miss Vigie, I responded to the principal's comment in the teacher meetings last week that students need extra work on writing with a proposal to do writing workshops. The look on his face and the excitement in his voice when he asked me "You want to do that?!" was great. I'll be working with 4th and 6th graders on this, since these are the two grades that take standardized tests at the end of the year.

This past weekend I went up to spend the night with Haley again to hang with her and Ashley, and Haley was so kind as to pick up the stuff in my mailbox at the PC office. Along with the usual Cable & Wireless bill, there was a card from Diana! and a big bag of Christmas presents from my Secret Santa in Australia! I got a bunch of candy, some spices, some drawing pencils and pens, some small sketchbooks, a calendar with pics of Australia things, some pics of Melbourne landscapes, and some skin and lip ointments. It was very exciting.

The most exciting thing of all is the prospect of Berney visiting later this year--he's working on arranging that. I'll try to see him around June maybe in Europe, but he might be able to stay for a considerable while, depending on how things work out. We'll see, but it is something awesome to look forward to.

Like I said, I'll post some recipes later. I just needed to get this down.

Jounen Kweyol

Sunday was Jounen Kweyol (Creole Day). It's an international celebration of Creole language and cultures, so everyone here dresses up in the traditional madras plaid patterns, white cloth, and red ribbons (or in floral patterns if they don't have madras). Last week Manman took me to get fitted for a dress, so I wore that and had my hair cornrowed for the day. "We're going to Creolize you!" she said.
In the morning we went to the Catholic church in Vieux Fort town for Mass. I was actually a little disappointed that it wasn't all in Kweyol, but the priest is Indian (as opposed to West Indian) and doesn't speak it fluently I think. But it was nice.

I went to Sunday lunch with Manman, and Ellery (a friend from down the road, who works at one of the schools I'm involved with) came over and did my hair. She also sewed a sash for me, since the dress was more of a frock and it needed some shape.
Manman and I went over to a little block party where Julius had gone. I had black pudding for the first time, and it was better than I thought it would be but I tasted it in my mouth for about an hour afterwards. It also has a weird texture.

Julius drove us to Micoud Village, one of the four communities around the island hosting Jounen Kweyol celebrations. It was filled with people, music, food, drinks, displays of old things like pots and pans and stuff. There was a stage by the Temple of Saint Lucia, and when we first went by there a dance performance was going on.
I feel like I'm really becoming a part of the community. Kids call out "Miss!" to me all the time, and most of them I don't recognize because I haven't worked with them, but they most certainly recognize me. I took some of my golden apple oatmeal biscuits yesterday to the Infant School (PreK-Grade 2) for Ellery and Manman, and Manman's sister Eugenia came by to give me some baked goods. More and more I know the people that pass. It's been very nice lately.

Actually it's been pretty hot lately. When I first had my hair cornrowed I had to take some aspirin when I got home because my head hurt, but now I'm glad I don't have to worry about putting it up in a bun in the mornings. Actually, I went out and bought a little kerchief to wrap my hair in while I sleep, and its nice because it keeps all the hair off my neck so I'm not so hot.

sugar apple kitty cherise Jesus Christ comics rainy day

Interesting day so far, and it's only 4pm. I've had all day off, so I actually got to sleep in until 7! I was woken by my phone ringing, but not quickly enough for me to answer. Of course, it said "No Number" so I knew it was Berney trying to Skype me. How exciting! We were able to talk a bit, and im, without costing us much (aside from the $.25/min used a couple times to get me on the phone).

While we were chatting, I had breakfast. This included a sandwich Manman (what I will be calling Nethelia, my host mom, from now on. It's Kwéyòl for mother, and pronounced like mama, but with nasal n's after the a's) made for me for lunch, since she thought I would be going into Vieux Fort to go to the school today. Breakfast also had some Earl Grey with too much evaporated milk, since the can I used for my first cup was curdled, I had to make a second cup, and there wasn't that much hot water left, and it's hard to pour in a tiny amount of milk. Talk about a spot of tea! I also had a sugar apple, which is the green scaly thing pictured in the middle. It came from the tree in the backyard--Manman said she climbed it to pick some the other day.

Now for your info session on sugar apples (they are nothing like regular apples, kinda like how pineapples aren't either). The other day I was sharing some cheap shortbread-and-vanilla-cream-filling cookies with Kelli in the training office, and I told her how they aren't that great but when I need a sugar fix they hit the spot. Well, that day when I came home I tried just a little bit of a sugar apple in the fridge, and WOW! I didn't think a regular fruit could taste so much like processed sugar! So I decided I would have one with breakfast today. To open it, you just sort of break it apart--the seams of the scales come apart easily on the ripe fruit. On the inside there's the sugary pulp that's a little grainy, and some seeds that are wrapped in slippery pouches (like the cacao bean). I couldn't even finish the thing, it was so sweet. So I'll have some later tonight after dinner.

After breakfast Manman left the house to do some errands, so I was left to my own devices. Recording devices, I suppose, since I kept using my camera.

The past couple of days I've been hearing the mewing of a baby kitten from the back balcony (many houses here are two stories, but complete homes on both, sort of like a duplex I suppose). I decided to see if it really was a kitty or if it was a bird in one of the trees or a squirrel (do we even have squirrels here?) or what. Well, well, it is a little kitten, just a few weeks old, there with its mom (who ran down the stairs as soon as I stepped outside) and a sibling from a previous litter. They are all very cute, although the baby kitty has something strange going on in the underside of its back legs--it looks like the skin has no fur, and perhaps the skin itself is damaged. Poor kitten, it kept hissing at me in the cutest way every time I passed by it, it sounded like it was a bag popping, and puffing up like a little fuzzball. Its sibling also left when I got closer, and this little baby was left all alone with me, a great big strange giant that would surely gobble it up. I spent some time picking some cherise (the word for the local cherries, which are tart and have about three seeds in them) from the stairs. After I got back inside, the momma cat returned to the balcony, along with the sibling, and nursed baby kitty.

Here people don't usually own pets in the way we do in the States. There are lots of cats and dogs around, and they can be found in residential areas and in business areas, just wandering the streets. To my knowledge they aren't aggressive (I've never seen them so much as bark at a human, though they make quite a racous at night with each other). They are generally very thin, since the food consists of rodents or lizards they catch and scraps people give them every couple of days. Most people don't let cats or dogs in their homes, even if they own them. They're not considered clean enough for that, or for petting by most people. Our cats hang around because a while back Manman made the mistake of feeding them. Now our yard is their home base, and they often try to get in the house (and sometimes succeed, since we have the doors open often to let in the breeze), although they roam all around the neighborhood. Lots of people also have goats and chickens and roosters, some have sheep, some have cows, some have horses. It's pretty neat sometimes to be riding through even the big city of Castries and seen some roosters just clucking around.

When Manman got back we decided to go visit Julietta, a friend (or relative? I never know) of hers in Grace, a suburb/part of town of Vieux Fort. It was a small house, with a cozy living room that has many of the same furniture and decoration style that we have in our house here, but in a much smaller living space. I listened mostly for a while, though at one point Julietta started asking me why I wasn't talking. This was sort of awkward, since I don't really talk much anyway around new people. After asking about where I'm from and such things, she asked what church I go to. I said I don't. She asked what religion I believe in, I told her I'm not religious but I do believe in god. She couldn't stand this, and for the next half hour told me that I need to get baptized, and put my life in the hands of Jesus and god, and that she would pray for me, and that Manman should be taking me to church, and that this is why I was here in St. Lucia: so that I could come meet Julietta and she could show me the way and the light. I tried to be polite, but it was very uncomfortable for me, since I do have my own spiritual beliefs, and it's not just that I don't know anything about the Christian god or have never been exposed to any of that, but that I have already chosen for myself what I believe. She told me I could choose to be baptized and follow Jesus and take the Word back to my parents and they would follow me, and I knew it would be pointless to tell her my own views on the matter. After a while she settled on telling me to think about it and sleep on it and let Manman know, who would then let Julietta know, and then she would get me baptized.

I really have nothing against Christianity and Catholicism. I think for the most part it is a beautiful, loving religion, but I don't think it's for me. I feel the same way about most religions, really. I am glad that people find hope in their own religions, and I sometimes wish I had grown up going to church, but that's mostly because I think I missed out on a whole community aspect that is part and parcel to most other people's lives. I have in the past struggled to find out for myself what god is, and for a few of my teenage years I wanted to major in religious studies in college. Finally I sorted out my own beliefs, saw how they are different and similar to others', and now I'm content in my own thoughts, and I often marvel at the wonders of god that I can sense around me. But this is a very personal matter for me, and I felt very uncomfortable to have someone telling me effectively that I'm wrong and what I have decided for myself already isn't the truth and all that. I know many people think that about people like me, and it's fine for them to think that, but I really prefer for them to not try to save me.

I'm already used to bowing my head for prayers before school starts, during school, before meetings, etc. here in St. Lucia. A considerable majority of people here identify themselves as Catholic, and several other Christian denominations also have good showings, and there's a decent population of Rastafarians, and a few Muslims. Religion is expected from everyone here, it seems, but no one I had met before made a huge deal about it. In fact, many people I've met don't go to church regularly, and many have their own beliefs that may not follow the exact words of the Bible. I don't mind going through the motions, and I'll even go to church with them if it will help me integrate, but I don't want to be baptized. Honestly, Julietta's prostletizing was the first thing that made me think, "Maybe I can't do this." I wanted to go home and cry at that moment, for fear that this would become a regular occurence.

Thankfully, Julietta let up after a while, and dropped the subject for the most part. When we got home, Manman asked me about how I felt, and I told her. She was really comforting to talk to, since she respects my beliefs and to some extent shares them as well. It made me feel a lot better.

Since then I've been able to use the internet, since it's been connected to this computer all day (the modem is in my host brother's [to be called "fwe mwen," meaning my brother] room). So I got to catch up on all my web comics. That was a good way to spend a day off, I thought. Actually, we would have visited another person up in Grace but she didn't answer her phone at all. And it's been raining all day--to the extent, of course, that the water has been shut off. Manman and I both took showers this morning when the water pressure was just low, not off. I'm following Lily's (a current PCV) advice: when it starts raining hard, when you see the clouds, wash your hair; you might not be able to again for a day or two.

Sorry for the long post. Here's more kitties to make up for it:

Update (while still typing the original post): the water is back on! Now I can wash my clothes!