Month: June 2011

We’re having so much fun in Abu Dhabi that we decided to stay for an extra day. I have lots of fun and funny pictures from our trip to the Grand Mosque (including some of me in an abaya), our dinner at a restaurant on the beach, and a trip to the park at 9:30 at night, but since it’s late I’ll just post this photo from dinner:

Heading back to Muscat tomorrow, but we’re already talking about a return trip in the fall when it will be cool enough to rent bikes and ride along the corniche (the path that runs along the beach).

We’re on our way to Abu Dhabi. 3 hours into our drive and so far there has been minimal screaming and yelling – the kids have been pretty quiet too. We’ve got plenty of water and snacks and the only thing I know I forgot is my Motrin. The tension in my neck and jaw is a warning that I will probably be needing it . . . woo hoo, side trip to an Emerati pharmacy in the near future.

 

One reason for the silence: chocolate granola bars.

We’re at the border crossing and it’s time for the dance of the passports. Crossing from Oman into UAE is a little convoluted because the road crosses back and forth between the countries a few times before you actually enter UAE for good. So there are several different checkpoints to pass through, some requiring passports, others requiring a stamped slip of paper that proves you showed your passport to someone else when you exited the previous country, one where they might want money even though we aren’t supposed to pay anything with our diplomatic passports, and if you miss any of those checkpoints (they aren’t all marked — for at least one of them you have to get out of your car and go inside a building) you have to drive back to where you screwed it up and get the proper thing signed/stamped or whatever. And yes, that happened to us last time.

It takes about an hour to completely cross the borders. You can tell when you’re in Oman because there are trash cans parked along the side of the road out in the middle of the desert, but on UAE land there aren’t any trash cans. Oman is big on keeping their country clean – in Muscat you see dudes walking around mopping and sweeping everywhere. UAE doesn’t place quite the same value on cleanliness, I guess.

See? Middle of nowhere . . . nothing for miles. Trash can.

Not related to our trip, this morning before we left, Lucy asked if my sister who works with the girls in India is named Demi Moore. A few weeks ago I showed Lucy a picture of Wendy from the wedding and told her that my sister spends a lot of time in India working with rescued girls. Last night Lucy saw something on the news about Demi Moore working with girls in India and thought the dark-haired beauty doing such honorable work must be my sister. Luckily having Wendy as my sister instead of Demi Moore means that Ashton Kutcher isn’t my brother-in-law. Whew!

Carter creating a dark place so he can see the PSP screen

Three hours down, three more to go. Now I’ve got to go referee a gum fight (no not gun, for a change) while we sit and wait for Josh to clear one of the checkpoints. Hopefully he’ll be back soon with our passports and we’ll be on our way to the next part of the border crossing. Where’s my Motrin?

UPDATE: We just got a call from Lucy who is frantic because water is gushing from the water tank on the roof. It’s shooting into the air and running down the side of the house and flooding the street. Good thing Josh has the phone number for the guy who has been working on the broken water heater the last few days so he can go over there and fix it. 

UPDATE: Got another phone call. Our household goods arrived in Oman yesterday and the transportation office at the embassy expected the paperwork and customs to be completed next week. The shipper just called to say he could deliver them *tomorrow*. Too bad we’ll be out of town and can’t take delivery until Saturday. Boo. We should have planned this trip months ago, then out stuff might have arrived even sooner.

She ate an entire nectarine — peel and all. I had to wrestle the pit away from her before she tried to eat that too.

 

For years I’ve heard people like Alton Brown encourage the use of whole nutmeg that you grate yourself in your cooking and baking, but I haven’t ever had the opportunity to try it. Until now. Lucy wanted nutmeg for the bechamel (white) sauce she makes for her lasagna and that’s the only way to buy it here — bags of glossy dark chocolate covered almond looking things that smell faintly of nutmeg.

We brought them home and Lucy used some in the lasagna and it was wonderful — a little extra nuttiness that was perfect with the sauce. A few days later I wanted to try these magical nutmegs for myself so I decide to make molasses cookies. I pull the nutmeg out, get out the box grater and get to work. I scrape and scrape and scrape the nutmeg against the box grater, but hardly anything comes out. The surface is hard, like a walnut, and even the side of the grater with the crazy sticky-outie prongs that will tear your knuckles to bits in a flash didn’t make a dent in the side of this nutmeg.

Lucy told me that she used one and a half nutmegs in the lasagna recipe and I couldn’t fathom how strong she must be to grate that much. I pressed a little harder and started seeing a few flakes at the bottom of the plate. I increased the speed of the passes and was making a little progress when it slipped out of my hand. I picked it up off the counter and immediately burned my thumb — the place that I had been rubbing against the grater had gotten so hot from the friction that it seared my thumb. Seriously. It hurt. Now I know how to start a fire if I ever go on Survivor. Sneak a few nutmegs past Jeff Probst and I’ll be the hero of my tribe. 

the offending spot that burned my finger

So I inspect it and the nutmeg still looks practically untouched. I smell the few grains of powder that I manged to get so far and it smells nutmegish — sort of like the stuff you buy at the store. Really? For all that work and a burned thumb? Since I didn’t have any other options and I really wanted the molasses cookies, I refused to give up. I gripped it a little harder between my thumb and forefinger and pressed harder against the metal and scraped. Little bits started flaking off and then I heard a crack! and a few little sharp pieces broke off and fell onto the plate.

I picked up one of the larger pieces and tasted it — hmm, it’s like biting down on a piece of gravel and it didn’t taste like much of anything. How am I supposed to get this nutmeg grated so no one breaks their teeth on my cookies? And then I look at the nutmeg left in my hand and realized that I have cracked through an outer shell and there is a smaller nut inside. I wonder if I’m supposed to grate the inside part too. Or maybe there’s a toxic seed inside and if I grate that part people will get sick and die. Yes, I really do think about those things. But much less often than I used to.

I pull the shriveled, leathery looking thing out of the outer shell and sniff it. Hmm, that actually smells like nutmeg. I run it across the grater a few times and a fine sifting of powder collects on my plate. I taste it and OHMYTHATISWHATNUTMEGISSUPPOSEDTOTASTELIKE exploded in my head.

In my defense, all the instructions for using whole nutmeg say to just grate the entire thing. Even after seeing it with my own eyes, I couldn’t find anything about nutmegs having an inedible shell or needing to crack through an exterior layer before using it. Several questions on culinary message boards asking the same thing about the nutmegs’ shell were answered with, “grate the entire nutmeg.” I started to second guess myself and thought maybe people grate the external shell and the internal nut until I finally found a posting on a message board that said that nutmegs are always purchased shelled in the US, but when buying them overseas they come with the shell on. Mystery solved.

Directions for the nutmeg impaired: light brown seed = good. Hard outer shell = bad.

 This was further confirmed when I found this article about nutmegs at globalgourmet.com:

There are three layers that surround the nutmeg fruit. The outer layer, known as the pericarp, is used to make nutmeg jelly. The red membrane, which enwraps the shiny dark nutmeg shell, is known as mace, nutmeg’s twin spice, which is eventually dried and ground, and used in a variety of dishes. Inside this shell is a seed—the nutmeg. No part of the nutmeg is ever wasted including the shell, which is used as flower bed mulch and for covering garden plants. 

          (italics and bold mine)

Great, anyone up for some mulch cookies? I baked and ate them anyway, and nobody noticed that one of the ingredients was actually something normally used as a soil amendment. And now in the future, I know to crack the shell before trying to grate the nutmeg.

The best thing about our house is where it’s located. Back before I dared to drive and before we had two cars, I never needed to fear running out of groceries when Josh went out of town because we are a short walk from the grocery store. And Starbucks. And Baskin Robbins. And many other little restaurants and stores. But I’m most often thankful that we have a grocery store nearby.

A lot of times at the end of the day, when the sun’s rays are less intense and we’re all getting stir-crazy from being inside, I will suggest a walk to the store. We always need milk or yogurt or fruit or something, so the boys grab their backpacks, I wrap the baby on my back, and off we go.

Strolling up our street. I probably made Caleb stop playing PSP to come along so that’s why he’s shuffling and pouting in this picture. At the end of this block, we cut over to walk along a path that cuts through the houses.

One of  the houses we pass has a small banana tree. This fabric is wrapped around the bunch of bananas to keep the birds or other animals from eating them. Hmm. Do birds eat bananas? :quick google search: I just learned that not only do the covers keep pests out, but they keep the fruit from getting sunburned and helps the bananas to grow evenly. I would be a much dumber person without google in my life.

We always see geckos running along this wall. Of course we have to stop so the boys can try and catch them. Today we saw a baby one that was smaller than my pinkie finger. It was so tiny I was afraid they were going to crush it with their clumsy hands.

See those cars at the top of the path? They are parked in the Starbucks parking lot. It was an easy walk to check our internet from there before we had it installed at the house.

After passing Starbucks, there’s another path through the shops that passes several cafes.

And now to shop. The men and women working the checkout counters love the baby.  

Lanterns and twinkle lights line the path and light the way at night.

This play table was not intended to be a walker, but Camille has figured out that she can push it along and walk behind it to maneuver all over the living room.

We thought we had lots of time until she started walking since she just started crawling recently, but she has other plans.

We’re on the move again too! Tuesday we head to Abu Dhabi for a few days. Josh will do “work stuff” one morning while the boys and I (oh yeah, and the girl too — I’m still used to saying “the boys”) hang out at the hotel pool and then we’ll explore the city for the rest of the time.

On the rash front, two are looking worse today, Calvin looks the same. Josh went to the pharmacy to pick up ancient middle-eastern medicine, AKA the arabic form of Benedryl.

Tonight we’ll have 18 people for dinner at our house (including our 5, so it’s not as many as it sounds) and I’m in the middle of cookie baking since Lucy made all the dinner food: coconut curry, vegetable rice, samosas, and a grilled eggplant salad (one of my favorite things that she makes). If anyone wants to make the trip over here, you’ll eat very well!

And one last pre-walking video for good measure: