Month: December 2014

margin (AKA I’m not Superwoman)

This week caught up with me. Last night I was at school from 3 until 7 watching a soccer game and two football practices. Tomorrow night I’m on chauffeur duty as Calvin goes on his first date to the Homecoming dance. Yikes! I’m feeling like I should watch Some Kind of Wonderful and get some fingerless gloves and a chauffeur cap.

Anyway, today was the day to get the last of the Homecoming details sorted out (dry cleaning, buy a belt, order the corsage) after school before heading to Bible study. All was on track until Calvin remembered at 3pm that he had an interview after school (for a scholarship he is applying for) and I had to gather dress clothes and run them over to base so he could change before his appointment. By the time we got home it was after 5, dinner was still unmade and all 3 kids had Secret Santa gifts that they still had to purchase for tomorrow. Oh and did I mention the Christmas tree fell over? The stand is missing a leg so the boys propped it up with a stack of books and Camille decided she wanted to read one of them and down it went.

Most of the ornaments survived and we got it back up, but it’s pretty lopsided now. 

So I pulled the ripcord on my emergency chute and declared an evening at home. I can’t remember ever missing a Wednesday night when we’ve been in town, but since Calvin has a cold and we started our day at 5:30am for basketball practice I figured he could use some extra rest — I know I need it!

I knew I made the right decision when we were walking home from our neighborhood store tonight (the kids bought plenty of sweets for their Secret Santa gifts) and Camille was screaming and sobbing, “I want candy!!!”

These photos are perfect following my 1BD lamb post. Someone in our neighborhood making a play on words with the “Beef: It’s what’s for dinner” slogan.  Sheep for dinner indeed. And Camille is still pouting about not getting candy so she stomped through my photo with a “Humph!” I love it. 
Victory is mine since it’s 8:30 and the kids are all in bed with the lights out when on a normal Wednesday I’m lucky if they are heading to bed by 10. Time to clear my mind before a weekend filled with Christmas parties, a formal dance, gingerbread houses, baseball practice, a leadership conference, basketball game and a triathlon (that I’m not competing in, but that will shut down all the major roads on the island making my drive more interesting than usual). Thankfully the 2 football games were cancelled (due to triathlon traffic) or I would have had even more to juggle. Peace.

Heading South (Crete revisited)

Josh is gone for another 2 weeks (doing fun stuff mostly, no need to worry about him) so in between my taxiing of children I’m going to try and finish up our Crete trip. The big incentive here is when it’s finished I will turn it into a book as a ready reminder of our vacation. I started this last year with Turkey and I love being able to pick it up and look through 100 pages of snow, Turkish lamps, ferry rides and food. I added Paris this fall and eventually want to go back and do a book of Oman (that might end up being several books), Jordan, UAE, etc.

So Crete. Lovely place. We left off having spent 5 days on the northwestern coast with days full of hiking, wandering, driving, beaching, and eating. On day 6 we headed south for more of the same. The town I chose is called Paleochora and is known for being great for tourists looking for beachside accommodations with a quaint small-town feel. Our drive south was full of windy roads, switchbacks and beautiful vistas overlooking green valleys. Every now and then we’d drive through tiny towns where a few houses dotted the edges of the road and then back to open road. I wonder where they do their grocery shopping?

houses on the side of the mountain, in the middle of nowhere. 

These little shrines dot the side of the highways. A lot of people have been killed on Cretan roads. It didn’t make me feel any better about some of the tightest turns to see 3 memorials in a row. 
Josh kept saying things like “I think we’re supposed to go straight up that hill” to freak me out. Only a mountain goat should be traveling on some of those hillside paths. 

We finally made it across the island to the southern coast (About a 2 hour drive). Our destination was a tiny peninsula town that spans both sides of the finger of land. 

Look how the sign says “Beach” with arrows pointing in both directions. 
Standing here I could see the ocean in both directions — one side of the peninsula has the sandy beach, the other side is a shoreline made of large round stones. 
Cretan man outside the 1 Euro store

We grabbed some lunch “downtown” (a few blocks from our apartment)

More wonderful Gyros — the fried potatoes are perfect. Nothing like french fries. 

Feta, pepers, tomatoes, olives, greek seasoning (oregano, thyme, mint)

After eating, we headed to the sandy beach that was only 1 block from our apartment. It was overcast, but not cold at all. 

The sand was smooth and fine — perfect for castle building. We were fortunate that there wasn’t any wind. Because Paleochora sticks out further than the rest of the coast it can get really windy here. The subsequent days we had to time our beach visit to avoid sand blowing in my iced coffee. Such a trial. 

We stayed and played and read and rested until sunset.

The view from our apartment balcony — have I said it yet about this place? I could live here. 

We walked a few blocks across the peninsula to the rocky side of the coast to find dinner when the moon popped up from behind the mountains. Picture a black sky with a huge glowing ball hovering below the clouds and you’ll almost have an idea of how amazing it looked. 

A yummy dinner of lentil soup, more fresh salads, moussaka (greek lasagna), grilled fish and more house wine. 

Checking out a few of the touristy shops on the way home. 

Greece has beautiful churches. Every little town has one. 

Stopping by the local grocery store on the way home for a few things for breakfast. These bottles of wine were a bit more upscale because they actually had labels. We saw tons of unlabeled/home brewed wine for sale in stores all over Crete. Why not? The entire country is laid back and relaxed. I love it. 

Thankful for 1BD lamb

I don’t think I’ve written about the 1BD lamb before. It took me two years to find out about this subsidy secret and I’ve made it my mission to make sure everyone on the island knows about it. At the market there are products from all over the world: apples from Chile, pomegranates from Syria, and avocados from Kenya. In the meat department we can get beef or lamb from New Zealand, Pakistan, India or Saudi. It all varies in price depending on the country of origin (and man, those Pakistani lambs look scrawny!). 
Anyway, I’m kind of particular about where my meat comes from. I don’t buy from India or Pakistan even though they are the cheapest. Not for any good reason, but because I picture the animal being raised somewhere like Mumbai and automatically it feels like it must be contaminated. I’m sure when I eat out in a restaurant the meat comes from those places, but whatever. I didn’t say it was logical. 
The cheapest beef or lamb here (from places where I imagine the animals are roaming on grass covered hills and are therefore safe to eat, Australia and New Zealand) starts at 3Bd/kilo ($3.60/lb) for ground beef and increases from there. Forget steaks. I can’t afford to feed my crew when they start around $8/lb. 
So this lamb thing. I don’t even like lamb. I tell people that lamb tastes like a farm smells. Ugh. BUT, I have found that lamb here is different. It tastes a lot like beef with only a hint of farm if I’m looking for it. But lamb is expensive just like beef. Until my friend told me about the “local lamb.” It’s actually Australian lamb that is shipped over alive and then slaughtered here in a “halal” manner (similar to kosher). It’s subsidized and sold for 1BD per kilo for any cut. That works out to about $1 per pound. I think I’d eat actual farm at that price. 
The trick is that it’s not advertised in the grocery story and it’s not out in the displays (at least I’ve never seen it anywhere). But my friend said, “Just ask for the ‘1BD lamb'” I’ve asked a few places and they knew what I was talking about, but didn’t ever have any, but then I hit the mother lode. The little grocery story near my house (that I don’t usually go to because it’s small) always has the 1BD lamb. And it’s out in the display right next to the 4 and 5bd/kilo lamb from other places. 
Look at that. Legs of lamb, chops, shoulder, whatever you want. All for about a dollar/lb. The guy will even take your leg or shoulder, cut the meat off for you and turn it into ground lamb. Or he’ll chop the shoulder into cubes, including running it through the bone saw so you can easily make lamb biryani. That wasn’t for me, but the Indian guy ahead of me in line. It was fascinating to watch. 
For Thanksgiving I had the bright idea of doing lamb chops instead of turkey. No turkey taking up all the room in my fridge for the 4 days it takes to defrost. No 5 hours of watching and basting the bird. No need to spend big bucks on a big turkey when the base was doing a free Thanksgiving dinner for all active duty members and their families — not turning down a free lunch! 
So I asked the butcher for both racks of lamb chops that were in the case and he weighed them out for me — 5 kilos (11 lbs of lamb). Then he trimmed them and cut them so they’d be ready to go on the grill. Two meals worth of lamb chops only cost $13. And that’s with some kids who eat 3 or 4 each. Those in the above photo are all mine. Crazy. 

So on Thanksgiving morning we slept in, spent the morning with friends playing football. A game for the adults . . .
and the kids on their own field. 

Water and snack break

Swinging high at the playground!
After a great morning we headed to base for thanksgiving “dinner.” Plenty of dressing, turkey, ham, roast beef and mashed potatoes. No prep and no cleanup! 

Then we went home and broke out Christmas — music, mulled cider, our Charlie Brown tree and ornaments and of course, lamb chops on the grill! An excellent Thanksmas weekend.