Thoughts on Cooking

I've been enjoying cooking during the loooong holiday I have until school starts on February 1. It's fun, and I think Jeff may have gained a few pounds! I thought I'd share some quirks that I've learned while cooking here - most of these things are what I'm really enjoying not having to deal with when I go home!

First, is the measuring involved with cooking and baking. I priced out measuring spoons, and they were REALLY expensive. Maybe it's just the shop I went to, but after seeing the price, Jeff said I seem to do fine with guessing and it's not really worth it. I agreed. So now I do everything by hand for small amounts. It's kind of fun, not knowing exactly how something will turn out, particularly with things like baking powder. For larger quantities, I have one glass that is exactly 1 cup (I measured using the ounces on my Nalgene bottle). From there, I can guesstimate fractions of a cup. Of course, the glass is narrower at the bottom and wider at the top, so those fractions are rarely the same twice. The butter here comes in grams. The recipes I get from http://www.allrecipes.com/ (my new favorite site) can be converted to metric, which is good. However, I bought butter in bulk (a 2 kilo block) and it doesn't come with the handy little lines marking the grams.

Second is the cooking temperature. My range is gas, which I used to like. However, the burners each have their own personalities. The main one is an overachiever. Even at low, things burn and sometimes I hold the pan in the air above it. The other front burner is smaller, and gets to low quite nicely for simmering things (unless I have a big pan, then the middle burns and the outside doesn't cook). However, when I turn it to low, which is all the way left, the flame goes out. Gas is still on, but apparently the low setting is so low that there isn't enough to burn. The back two burners have two settings: high and flame-thrower. All they're good for is boiling pasta and steaming veggies. The oven is a different matter altogether. The dial is in Celcius, and I've become pretty good at remembering the two main conversions for 350 and 425 (180 and 220, respectively). But it doesn't matter, because the lower temperatures on the dial don't heat up the oven enough to cook everything. So almost everything I do has the dial between 220 and 240, but I have no idea how hot it actually is. The shortcake I baked today was supposed to take 15-20 minutes, but it took 55 minutes in my oven. Additionally, the oven doesn't seem to have good insulation. Within minutes of turning it on, the kitchen is roasting hot.

Finally we have the issue of ingredients. While I love my new favorite website, it seems that all the recipes call for one of the following:

• salad dressing seasoning packet
• dried onion soup mix
• tomatoes in a can (any variety)
• condensed cream of mushroom soup
• cheddar cheese
• sour cream
• baking soda.

I've figured out substitutions for the soup and sour cream, but everything else is either unavailable or prohibitively expensive. And baking soda (aka soda bicarbonate) is nowhere be found. Granted, I haven't gone on a mission to find it, but it's not at the stores I regularly patron. For the tomatoes, anything other than tomato paste is rare and expensive. As a side note, mushrooms are very expensive and not always available fresh. I have a big can in my cupboard I bought on sale and I'm waiting for an irresistable recipe to use them. A lot of recipes call for mushrooms, too. Oh, last complaint: I can't find vanilla extract. They sell vanillin, which is a powder mixed with sugar. I use it and it seems to work, but it's frustrating not to have the real thing.

There are some really nice things about cooking here. All the local ingredients are fresh and the produce is all vine-ripened. Strawberry season has lasted for over a month. Some things that are expensive at home are quite reasonable here, like capers. My new favorite dinner is chicken piccatta. And things rarely burn in my oven, even if I forget about them (which I usually do).

Jeff and I were talking about how weird it will be to go home and have supermarkets. How will we handle more than choosing between crunchy and creamy peanut butter? Here, we're lucky if the store has even one brand! (Currently it's Peter Pan and before that it was Skippy). We have two choices of oil: corn and sunflower. It's like that with lots of items. It will be interesting to adjust back to a U.S. lifestyle.

Embassy Adventure

The title to this post is somewhat misleading, as the outing this morning was not terribly adventurous. I had to go to the embassy to change my name from my maiden name to my married name. Since my passport is 9 years old, somewhat worn, and without too many pages left, I decided to just get a new one.

I've been here for a year and a half, and this is the first time I've been to the embassy. I had all my paperwork and documents ready, so I was pretty sure things would go smoothly. My only exposure to US embassies is from movies and novels. I expected to feel a little bit more like I was in the US. That was not the case! It never felt like I left Cairo, except everything was clean and quiet.

I waited half an hour after taking a number and found out I completed the wrong form. So the guy behind the window gave me the form I needed and sent me to the cashier to pay the fee. I went back to him with everything completed, and he said to come back in two weeks and they'll have my new passport. Pretty smooth.

Jeff groaned when he found out how easy it was for me. He had a very difficult time getting his a couple years ago!

Khan al-Khalili

We went to the big open-air market called the Khan al-Khalili on Sunday. Turns out that's the day most vendors take off. Oh well, we got a little glimpse of what it's like, and much less hassle than when they're all open.

I was admiring an alabaster pyramid in a shop where Christine bought something. The guy said it was 225 LE, but for me, because I'm nice to him, will only charge 185 LE. That was WAY out of my price range, and I wasn't really interested in buying anyway. I said thank you and started walking away. He came after me, asking how much I would pay for it. I said 40 LE, thinking that was low enough for him to go away and leave me alone. He thought for about 2 seconds, and said, "Okay." I was surprised, but I felt obliged to purchase after he agreed to my price.

So here's my new pyramid:

Busy Day

Our friends, Luke and Christine, arrived last night. It was fun going to the airport and being all anxious while we waited. They finally showed up and we've been enjoying their company! Today we had a Christmas gift exchange. Jeff and I got to open up gifts from home (thanks for the socks!) and from Luke and Christine, and they had a few gifts to open from us. Then it was off to see Cairo! Today we visited Coptic Cairo, the mosque of Ibn Tulun, and the mosque and madrasa of Sultan Hassan. We also visited the Gayer-Anderson Museum which is two preserved houses with random collections of artifacts and art. Then we had lunch at a streetside hole-in-the-wall. We are all thankful our digestive systems have survived. After returning home for a rest, we took some time to look at pictures from Luke and Christine's time in Israel and Jordan. Then we went out to dinner at a local restaurant. Whew! I'm exhausted! Tomorrow we're heading to Alexandria for a day. Pictures may come later...

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

It's about 2:00 pm right now. Jeff is napping on the couch and I just put some banana bread in the oven. This morning we got up around 9:00, read the Christmas Story, and opened presents. It was fun! Jeff gave me a gag gift - a reminder of Egypt: an ashtray with pharonic decorations. After getting cleaned up, Jeff made pancakes and eggs for breakfast. It was yummy! Unfortunately, we've already had to do dishes twice this morning - once to make breakfast and once to clean up. It's days like this that I miss having a dishwasher!

Here is a Merry Christmas photo. More are posted on Facebook - send me an email and I'll send you the link!

Ein Sokhna

Yay for the upcoming weekend! Jeff and I are taking advantage of a school trip to go to a classy resort on the Red Sea for one night. I can't wait to see the sea and breathe some fresh air!

And I think the name of the city means "Hot Springs".

New Fears

I wasn't afraid of dogs before coming to Cairo.

Dogs aren't looked upon fondly in this country. People don't like them and don't keep them as pets. Foreigners, however, do like them and do keep them as pets. What happens when that foreigner moves away and can't take the family pet with them? You guessed it, the dogs are left to fend for themselves. They aren't often neutered/spayed.

There are packs of these dogs around the city, particularly where I live (in a foreigner area). One morning, I had to walk by some dogs where were lying on and around a parked car. One of them got up and barked at me, following me until I left his territory. My heart was pounding and ever since then, I avoid dogs whenever possible. These are not small dogs - probably about the size of Labradors or Golden Retrievers. And it's not just a few - I've seen as many as 8 or 9 running together.

It's not even that I'm afraid of dogs - if one attacked me, I'm fairly confident a good kick would scare it off. But what about it's 8 friends? Additionally, since I don't come from an island (like Australia), I don't have a rabies vaccination. That's the real fear. I don't want to get rabies and I don't want to be treated in a hospital here.

So I avoid the dogs.

The Pharmacy

On Friday I went to the pharmacy to buy cough syrup for Jeff. The way pharmacies work here is that there is a separate store for all things related to medicine and hygiene (soap, make-up, etc). For medicine, I have to talk to a guy behind a counter and he brings the product out. I look at it and decide if I want it or not. If I want it, he puts the medicine in a bag and tells the cashier how much my total purchase costs and then I wait for the cashier, who ends up having to confirm the price with the guy again, and then leave.

There is also strong government regulation on pharmacies. For example, they cannot open a pharmacy within 100 meters of an existing pharmacy. The law that causes problems is that medicines cannot be marked up more than 20%. That is not enough of a mark-up to run a business - hence all the additional products.

So I was at the counter and I asked for cough syrup. Jeff had specifically asked for syrup with the ingredient expectorant. Or something like that. So the guy brings out an all natural syrup. It cost 25 LE, which seemed expensive but I was willing to pay if it was the right product. I looked at the ingredients: licorice extract and honey. I asked to see another one. He brought out another one for about 18.50 LE that was the same thing. I have honey at home and I've been putting spoonfuls in Jeff's anise tea! So I asked for something that is not all natural. The guy brought out another product. It cost about 10.25 LE but didn't have the right ingredient. So I asked for another one. He brought out one called Pepto... something for 8.25 LE. I wasn't convinced it was for coughing. I opened up the insert, and sure enough, it was for a cough, but didn't have that ingredient that Jeff wanted. By the time I figured out it was for a cough, the guy had already brought out another one - 3.75 LE with Expectorant right on the box, in English. It's a fraction of the price of the "really good one" the guy first brought out, and had 50% more syrup. So for $0.68 cents, Jeff is happy.

I wanted something else, but at that point I took the first one he gave me. I wasn't about to go through that process again!

Random Pictures

Here are some recent photos we took.

Billy, Sabine and Jeff who are supposed to be looking sad because I'm about to win in Monopoly even though they all gained up against me. I didn't win, so thier evil plan worked!

Me, putting lunch in the oven after church last week. I don't remember what it was - I think just reheating leftovers.

Visiting the Prisoners

Jeff has started visiting prisoners about twice a month. The prisoners are non-Egyptians who are in for a variety of offenses, most of them not what we would consider major crimes, and some have been awaiting trial for years. When he visits, he goes with a group from church and they bring food for the prisoners. I guess they have kitchen facilities - or at least a hotplate and pots. He's been going twice a month because 1)it takes most of Saturday and we want to spend time together and 2)it is quite expensive for an all-day taxi and purchasing food and hygiene items.

Some friends from home gave us some money for the prisoners. With the money, Jeff and I went shopping for the 15 new men who were scheduled to arrive. Here's what we got:

Each prisoner got what is pictured: 1/2 dozen eggs, bread, 1 kg rice, 1 bar soap, a washcloth thing, and toothpaste. Not pictured is the toothbrush. Jeff had to walk to church with everything and it was really heavy (15 kilos of rice plus everything else!). Since I didn't want to get up early with him to carry everything to church (a 15-20 minute walk), I loaded it all up in a large suitcase. It didn't all fit and he still had to carry two bags.

And the great thing is, we didn't even spend half the money! The rest of it has since been used for similar items for the female prisoners (this was for the males).

I don't go visiting with Jeff, but it was really fun to be involved in this way. Thank you to those of you who gave so generously to the prisoners!

A Felucca Potluck

On Friday afternoon we went on a boat ride with a group from church. I love potlucks and totally ate too much. It was fun. Here's some pictures:

One More Food Post

Soon after our arrival I got a craving for French Toast. I bought the special bread (just a regular sliced loaf - that's sold in the foriegner-frequented stores) and put it in the freezer and stocked up on eggs and butter. French Toast has to have syrup, so I was determined to wait until we found some. A week or so later, I came home and Jeff had purchased a big thing of yummy, liquid maple-flavored sugar. That night was breakfast for dinner:

Culinary Endeavors

I like being home on the weekends because I get to cook. This weekend it was chicken and rice for lunch after church and a pasta salad for a potluck. I should mention that we have chicken and rice almost every weekend because it's relatively inexpensive and it's the only thing I've bothered figuring out how to make. The potluck was on the Nile - pictures of that will be posted soon!

Fortuitous Beginning

This morning when I got to the office I moved the clock to the shelf over the computer. The clock hasn't been hung on the wall yet, so I thought this might be a more visible spot than where it was before.

A few minutes later it fell on my head. The glass broke onto everything - the desk, the floor, in my coffe and my purse, and so on. The cleaning man was about to clean the office, so he helped me pick everything up.

I'm okay, but my forehead got a little scratch and I had to throw out my coffee.

Monopoly

Jeff and I made some new friends and found out they like Monopoly. That was all the excuse we needed to go to the store and buy the game we had seen the first week we arrived. We had pizza and played with Billy and Sabine. Sabine whipped us all and I think she felt a little bad about it.

I'm also experimenting with this application, Slide. Let me know what you think.

The Commute

Lately I've been bad about posting regularly. But I have repented and have decided to be more dedicated! I have been thinking about posts, however, and I have a bunch of pictures and some thoughts to share in the next few days and weeks.


First, I thought I'd share some of my commute. This is going home on the bus yesterday. The bus left school at 4:45 p.m. At this time things are actually quite calm. It's after the main rush hour so traffic is not so bad.


Leaving School:

The Future University of Egypt (FUE). This university is very near AUC, but with much better signage to direct people out to the middle of the desert. I heard that before they moved to New Cairo, it was named the Future University in Cairo, which is not such a family-friendly acronym. The architecture is quite amazing...

That's it for now - I have more video to post later!

Measure 58

A family member sent me this article today. As a new member to the teaching English profession, I thought I might comment on Oregon's Measure 58. According to the article, Measure 58, "would prohibit schools from teaching English learners in their native language after one year in elementary school or two years in high school."

The research presented in the article is absolutely correct. Prominent second language acquisition researchers have found that students who do not become literate in their first language have a very difficult time learning a second language. Much of this work was done in Canada, particularly with Canada's First Peoples not being able to learn English despite being put in English-only schools. There is something about developing the ability to read and write in one's first language that helps the brain fully develop the capacity for language. This is especially true in children. One year is not always enough.

For high school students there is also the question of confidence. If they are bright, good kids, but can't show their progress because of the language, how is that a good education? What will that do to their desire to learn? It can be incredibly demotivating to have a desire to show the teacher what you know but not be able to because of the language. Students need to be able to work on both content and language at the same time. There are several ways to do this - from normal subject teachers teaching both English skills and the content, to the ESL teacher incorporating the content from courses into the ESL classes, to simply putting students in mainstream classes and offering ESL as additional class. In any case, two years may not be enough time depending on the level of literacy a student already has in their first language.

This measure is directly related to everything I am studying and working on. Language learning is complicated and much about it is still unknown. To arbitrarily put a time limit on a person's learning is irresponsible. Many studies have shown that immersion doesn't produce competant language learners, especially if the goal is academic language use.

If Mr. Sizemore thinks that schools keep students in ESL programs for the extra monetary support, perhaps he should promote some kind of annual language assessment program for ESL learners rather than putting a time limit to someone's learning. I find it hard to believe that any responsible and ethical teacher would hold a learner back on purpose.

Africa Live!

Yesterday Jeff and I went to church at the normal time. We ended up staying quite a bit after, talking to various people, praying, and generally hanging out. Church was over around 12:30 pm, and by the time we had declined an invitation to go out to lunch, it was after 1:00 and we wanted to say for the music of the next service, Africa Live!

Our church has four services. They recently slightly modified the worship styles of some of them. Thursday night is small and contemplative, Friday 9:30 is more traditional, 11:15 is less traditional, and the 1:30 Africa Live! is for the African community we have in our church (and anyone else who wants to go). I've been wanting to visit the last service for a while, and this was a prime opportunity (plus we had both eaten breakfast and weren't too hungry).

The Africa Live! service was great. As the music began, people kept arriving, and everyone started moving. And I don't mean just swaying in thier seat, but moving their feet, bending over, lifting up thier hands, and whatever else they felt like doing. The weird thing is, it wasn't disorderly. People followed the music leaders and participated appropriately. The feeling I had was that people were free! I was thinking about how different the cultures of our church services are. Even in the younger-people oriented service, I would not feel quite as free as I did at Africa Live!. Comparing the cultures didn't carry any judgement, it was just seeing the differences. I really liked seeing emotion embodied at the African service. Emotions in my regular services, if expressed, are very subtle. I also appreciated how the African worship team seemed less concerned with being "professional" musicians. They are talented and there is order and they all follow the leader, but again, there is a freedom to be expressive and real.

Jeff and I left right before the sermon (the same one we heard in the previous service). I think we are both just a little bit African in our hearts.

A Little Spoilin'

On Thursday last week Jeff and I treated ourselves with pizza, soda, and Ramadan treats. Here are some pictures:

We liked the Ramadan sweets so much, we bought more a few days later:

Settling In

It's been a while since I last posted. Things are finally starting to settle into a routine and we have internet at home! That was the primary reason for not blogging. When Jeff and I arrived, we were happy to find our landlord had received my emails and was expecting us. After some serious dusting, here are some pictures of our flat:

Painted behind the front door:

View from the front door:
The living room:
View from the main area. It's nice to be at tree level:
The kitchen:

The bathroom:

The guestroom:The master bedroom: