Mango Pickle

In 2020, we finally got around to watching the eleventh season of Doctor Who, the sixth episode of which, "Demons of the Punjab," centers around the Partition of India in 1947.

Sometimes people ask me about our homeschool curriculum, and I tell them that we use such and such for math (Singapore Math, Beast Academy, Art of Problem Solving, Khan Academy, CTC Math...) and such and such for science (Mr. Q, Science Mom...) and then I about fall apart at social and language studies because the answer of, "Well, we kind of just do whatever suits our fancy..." doesn't entirely sit well with everyone. 

That is to say, in 2020 we watched "Demons of the Punjab" and then fell into a unit on the history of India...as best we could. We watched things like Lagaan and Bride and Prejudice. We read The Night Diary. We read The History of India for Children. We read Mangoes, Mischief, and Tales of Friendship: Stories from India—this particular collection of stories was very impactful for the children.

The main character frequently discussed his love for mango pickle and the kids were anxious to try it. 

But...I dunno...it was the middle of COVID...so we weren't spending time looking for mango pickle, I guess. We were more concerned with acquiring, like, toilet paper and hand sanitizer and things like that. 

I don't remember what research we did on mango pickle, all I know is that it was described in such a tantalizing way that the kids have been thinking about it for the past six years. They've brought it up regularly. We have never been able to satisfy their curiosity...until now. 

Croissants, cows, and not loving walls

Milk is rather expensive here (or at least it feels rather expensive here). It is 100% Qatari produced (at Baladna Farm, which is probably worth a visit someday) from a herd of cows flown in from various countries throughout the world (including 6000 cows from Canada) during the 2017 blockade (with more added since then to bolster the herd)—but even though I grew up brainwashed to support the Canadian cattle industry (I ♥ Alberta Beef!) we have been encouraging the kids to expand their breakfast repertoire away from cold cereal + milk. 

They've been enjoying yogurt and eggs and leftover rice (we've been eating a lot of rice-based meals because we bought a rice cooker for our little hotel kitchen) and these prepackaged croissants from Saudi Arabia. They're pretty good, as far as taste goes.  

As far as typography goes—most excellent!

Ice cream v. Stranger danger

On Thursday morning Miriam took the metro to the library by herself for the "creative threads" group while the rest of us stayed home to do our homeschool lessons. Then in the afternoon I took the kids to the pool while she stayed behind to fold laundry. 

She's been here for one week now and I think the hotel apartment is starting to feel like close quarters for her. She's craving alone time (and that's fine). 

We are the first "generation" of employees at GUQ to get go house hunting on our own. In the past people have simply been assigned a place to live. While people are excited about getting to live anywhere in the city...living in a hotel while waiting to find a place is perhaps less than ideal, particularly for a family our size. But, there are perks!

Apparently popsicles at the pool are more standard than we originally thought. We've been offered popsicles three times now! 

Yesterday the lifeguard (who I am guessing is Filipino, though I couldn't say with certainty—some places...like Carrefour...have a person's originating country on their badges, but not here at the hotel, so I'm just guessing) came right up to Phoebe, who was taking a swimming break in a swinging chair. He patted her head and pinched her cheek and said, "Hey, hey—what's your name? Phoebe! Phoebe—do you want some ice cream? Come with me, we will get you some ice cream!"

And I just...am not sure how I'm going to teach her about "stranger danger" here when every time we turn around someone is trying to lure her away with ice cream. And the thing is...it's safe here...to allow oneself to be lured away with ice cream. It's a little less so in other places, but generally fine here. 

Anyway, here she is with her pink guava popsicle, which rejuvenated her swimming spirit:

It has been less humid lately and yesterday was so windy (and still quite hot). We've only been getting up into the low hundreds (in °F) this week, which has honestly felt more manageable than when we're reaching into the teens.

A special treat

 I think this makes the third post in a row that includes ice cream.

Phoebe had ice cream on the plane. 

We had ice cream at IKEA yesterday (which Phoebe threw up).

And now I'm going to write about ice cream again. Moving is wonderful. But also stressful. And it turns out that a little bit of ice cream really can help soothe raw emotions (particularly with preschoolers involved, but I am pretty sure that drowning sorrows in ice cream is a rather common trope). 

*****

Today was our first somewhat official day of school.

True, we just got here and are still getting over jet lag.

True, we're in temporary housing so will have to move again in a couple of months. 

True, I feel like just being here is a pretty big learning experience. 

But it's been a long and rather hectic summer and we really needed to build some structure into our days. 

Now with fireworks

Yesterday we worked right up to (and probably a little past) dinner time and then—covered in spider webs and at least one actual spider (found on my shoulder whilst at the restaurant) from clearing things out of the garage and basement—we took the kids to Waffle House for, well, waffles. 

They thought it was a huge treat! 

Pi Day

Andrew went all out for Pi Day this year. It helps that it was on a Saturday rather than a weekday and it helps that some of the chaos of this semester is starting to ebb a little bit. For dinner he made two kinds of quiche—bacon and cheese and green onion and za'atar. Both were delicious. 

I can't believe it's not butter!

When we first began the conference tradition of a vegetable tray (back in our Durham days), it felt like a real splurge. But the kids loved it and begged for a vegetable tray every conference after.

And how do you say no to children begging for vegetables?

Our conference spread has...expanded over the years. Charcuterie boards came into vogue and we jumped on the band wagon and now the kids expect one of those every year—meat and cheese and crackers. You can see this year's charcuterie (courtesy of Benjamin) behind this beautiful bowl of hummus (courtesy of Andrew):

Pelican's in Georgia

It has been years since we've been to Pelican's!

We went on a family adventure on Thursday (which I will write about eventually) and there was a Pelican's right across the street! Who knew? 

What's up, Doc?

One of Phoebe's favourite treats to get at the store are the bags of mini sweet peppers. She loves them, will help herself to them, and chomp on them with breakfast, lunch, and dinner (as well as in between meals). But she went shopping with Daddy on Saturday and came home with a new treat—fancy carrots—and has been eating those like they are the best thing in the world.

Half our house is sick right now, so I (sick) stayed home with the sick kids and Phoebe (who is mostly better since she was sick early in the week) while Andrew (not sick because he was also sick early in the week) took the healthy kids to stake conference (and simply didn't want to battle Phoebe).

We (the sick ones) watched a few Friend to Friend broadcasts instead. And Phoebe ate like half a bag of carrots or something, getting increasingly creative with how she was eating them as time wore on.

Calamities of various proportions

Nothing untoward happened on Monday...except that several of us got a little too much sun. But Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday have certainly had their moments of excitement!

On Saturday, Grandpa bent over to get something out of the fridge and when he stood up he bumped a shelf with his shoulder and sent a jug of orange juice crashing down to the floor. It split open and went all over the floor. It took two full bath-sized towels to mop it up (and then some). 

I was just glad it wasn't my kids who made the mess. 

On Sunday, Darla went to get a bowl out of the cupboard and the shelf—which was missing one of its pegs—tilted and an entire set of dishes came crashing down. Honestly, I'm a little vague on the details here because I was in the bathroom when I heard the crash. 

My first thought was, "I hope that wasn't my kids!"*

*Technically my first thought was, "I hope no one is hurt!" But that thought quickly passed because there wasn't any associated screaming. So it was clear that something had broken and not someone. So my more permanent thought was, "I hope that wasn't my kids!"

Tales from the garden

My garden has been neglected this spring. 

A very wise mentor of mine recently told me to leave myself room to fail—and I have! I have approximately 72 square feet of failure in the front yard (plus, you know, the rest of the yard)!

Sure, the annuals we planted have been pulling their weight. And little bits of zombified compost have popped up through the soil, reanimated tendrils lurching toward trellises—they're sure to offer us a surprise harvest of sorts. And friend who started too many tomatoes offered me her leggy cast-offs.

So it's all chaos out there, but that's okay because it's a beautiful, wild failure.

*****

The same friend who gave me the tomatoes gave me some clustered mountain mint last year.

When I say friend, you should know that this friend and I met on the Buy Nothing Group and our entire friendship is just...the exchange of plants and advice. And it's mostly me taking because—let's face it—my garden is pathetic and I need all the advice I can get.

She's been trying to increase the number of local plants in her garden—mountain mint being one of them. 

Like most mints, mountain mint is a prolific spreader, but it's less of a problem because the shoots it sends out tend to not root very deeply, so it's controllable. Also, it's native, not invasive. 

That mountain mint took to our hillside like it was coming home after a long day and has spread significantly since I planted it at the end of last summer. And that's fine by me. Bees love it—wasps and butterflies, too. It smells delicious.

"Is it edible?" Rachel wanted to know.

"I don't know," I told her. "Most varieties of mountain mint are, from what I've researched. But some aren't and..."

Long story short, Rachel picked a leaf and ate it. 

And she didn't die. And she didn't get sick. 

Yellow Flamingos

Today I was reading Can You Dance Like a Peacock? with Phoebe and she got really excited about the flamingo page. 

"Can we get some flamingos at the store?" she asked. 

"I...don't know...that you can really get flamingos at the store...?" I said.

"You can!"

"Where?"

"Just at the store! They have them! But not usually pink flamingos."

"Yeah, see...I didn't think they had pink flamingos at the store."

"They have yellow flamingos. Can we get those?"

"Yellow flamingos?"

"Yes! I love them!"

Dinner on Thursday

Last night we made Hawaiian Haystacks for dinner, something we haven't eaten (I think) since very soon after Karen's death in 2018, when someone in our ward brought it over for dinner. 

I wasn't really sure what to make for dinner...except that we had a fresh pineapple to use...and time was ticking so I decided to just start a pot of rice cooking and then brainstorm about what to have with the rice while it was cooking.

My three ideas were:

1. Something Mexican (we have leftover taco meat in the fridge)
2. Stir fry of sorts
3. Hawaiian Haystacks

I settled on Hawaiian Haystacks because (a) we hadn't had that in so many years that the kids couldn't even recall what it was and (b) we'd had "Ultimate Salad Bar" earlier in the week and had a lot of leftover toppings that also qualify as Hawaiian Haystacks toppings. 

All I had to do was make some chicken gravy and cut up a pineapple...and a bunch of vegetables. 

Often the gravy is made from a can of cream of chicken soup, but we don't usually have that stocked in our pantry, so I had made it from scratch, which really is not so difficult except that Phoebe wanted to help. She pulled out every single stool in our house and set them all up in the kitchen, forming an obstacle course of sorts (but allowing her to reach any given counter surface...as well as leaving a few in the middle of the kitchen floor to trip over). Then she demanded that she help and help and help.

"Phoebe," I sighed, wish that Andrew was home to be cooking with her instead of...me...having to do it. "I am not as confident about cooking as Daddy is, so I'm not as confident about allowing you to help. This is a step that Mommy has to do on her own, okay? You can have a turn stirring soon..."

So I browned the onions and I blended the water and flour and I made the base of the gravy and then I added the milk, whisked things together briefly, and handed Phoebe the whisk. 

"Finally!" she growl exasperatedly. "I tan tuut!"

And now for something completely different!

Last night we waited to have dinner until after my class. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. It depends on how the day goes, who is making dinner, and the level of everyone's hunger. My class gets out at 6:00 so it's not like it makes for a super late supper, but sometimes we like to eat earlier. 

Anyway, Zoë made dinner all by herself while I was in class. She greeted me precisely at 6:00 to tell me so.

"Mmmmm," I said, sniffing the air. "Smells like spaghetti."

"Well, it's not spaghetti!" she said. 

"Oh!" I said in surprise (because it really smelled like spaghetti). "What is it?"

"Something different!"

"But what?"

"You will just have to find out!" she sang, practically dancing out of my bedroom/office.

I followed her downstairs and found a steaming pot of...cavatappi...on the table. 

Cavatappi is a noodle shape. 

So essentially spaghetti.

And it was delicious.

Benjamin's Spritz Cookies

Benjamin needed to make cookies for his youth activity tomorrow. The boys are planning on taking some cookies around to various people, which meant they needed cookies. They asked Rachel if she would make some cookies for them and she said, "No way!" She felt like the boys were perfectly capable of making their own cookies. And she's not wrong!

When we first learned the boys would need cookies (yesterday) we talked about having Benjamin make cake mix cookies since those are so easy. But then I suggested he make spritz cookies because they really aren't much more difficult than cake mix cookies and I...just always want them during Christmas. 

Not that I'll get any of this batch..but if you teach a boy to make Christmas cookies...chances are he'll make them again...right?

So Benjamin made spritz cookies this evening, mostly by himself. We mixed by hand because Rachel was cleaning in the kitchen and we didn't want to disturb her...and because I grew up mixing practically everything by hand so I rarely think to use the stand mixer for cookie dough.

Here he is stirring;

Watermelon pizza

Alexander has been loving reading magazines recently. We get The Week Junior (a magazine on current events) and The Friend (a church magazine) at our house. He loves reading all the stories but has been particularly interested in the recipes. 

He's been hankering for some watermelon fruit pizza since reading about it in The Week Junior and he finally got to make it on Sunday to have with dinner (which was otherwise leftovers). He'd hounded Andrew about being sure to pick up the required ingredients at the grocery store on Saturday. Andrew came home with blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries in place of the cherries the recipe called for, but this was a case where substitutions were just fine.

Watermelon, Sunflowers, and Pollinators

Watermelon is usually pretty good on its own, I think. 

Andrew, on the other hand, doesn't ever think watermelon is good.

Everyone else in our family enjoys watermelon, though, so in the summer Andrew will often pick up a watermelon when he does the grocery shopping (because he does the grocery shopping at our house). He won't typically cut it (though he has on occasion), but he will buy it for us. 

I have never succeeded in growing one, though we had some butternut squash volunteer in our yard this year (from the one time Andrew made butternut squash soup, I guess) and it is going wild. Well, the vines are, anyway. We've got a couple of lovely butternut squashes developing, but that's all. 

Freudian slips: Dishwashing edition (and a cake story for dessert)

We were finishing up dinner this evening...relatively late...because we had things like swimming and music lessons...and we were reminding the kids about their "dinner jobs." One child is in charge of clearing the table, one child is in charge of doing the dishes, one child is in charge of tidying up the floors, and one child is in charge of taking care of the cat (and garbage, if needed). Alexander helps out here and there or helps keep Phoebe entertained and out of the way. 

It sounds like a well-oiled machine, doesn't it? 

After all, we're pretty experienced parents now. We have systems and things like that...

Alas, systems are always better in theory than they are in practice (at least from our experience), so it really works like a rusty, piece-of-junk machine. 

But it's working (I guess), so that's all that matters.

Particularly Pungent Pineapple

Andrew made chicken tikka masala for dinner. It was delicious but was a little spicier than he intended, the little kids suffered through a few bites of the sauce, but mostly ate plain rice and naan. Spicy bites were alternated with bites of fresh pineapple, to quell some of the heat. 

Everything was fine and dandy until I looked over at Phoebe and noticed her lips were bleeding. 

"Phoebe!" I said. "Why are your lips bleeding?!"

I dabbed them off with a napkin, trying to remember if she'd tried to get down at some point and bumped her face on the table or something. Because why would she be bleeding?

And then Benjamin said something, so I turned to look at him and his lips were bleeding.

"Benjamin!" I said. "Your mouth is bleeding, too!"

"Wait, what?" he asked, wiping his mouth with his napkin. 

"He's bleeding, too?!!" Andrew asked.

We started frantically scanning faces: "Alexander's mouth is bleeding, too!" Andrew announced.

"Is mine?" cried Zoë, who hadn't really touched much of her dinner.

Zoë was fine. 

"My mouth burns a little, but I think it's fine," Rachel said. 

Same answer for me and Miriam, both.

Andrew volunteered to be the constant for our study. "I didn't have any pineapple," he said, which launched a long discussion of which fruit he'd prefer in any given pair of fruits because he doesn't often choose to eat pineapple, apparently. 

And with good reason!!

Now, we already knew about bromelaine in pineapples, and have often joked that it's a fruit that you have to digest before it digests you, but we have never had one quite as pungent as this one!

There were a few panicky moments where we weren't sure why everyone was suddenly bleeding, but it only took us a few minutes to clue in to what was wrong. Still—so weird!

On a scale of one to ten...

I will write about our evening out soon! In the meantime, while we have all tested "negative" from COVID-19 and have been improving, we have not been having a fun time at our house. For whatever reason, both Andrew and I developed a post-COVID cough, and it's a doozy. It's possible Zoë and Phoebe have the same cough, but theirs isn't as bad. This cough is seriously no fun. 

And it's not like I didn't have a cough when I was sick with COVID. Because I did! 

I coughed so hard—I kid you not!—I pulled a muscle in my back (or something...must be getting old). I could hardly bend or twist and coughing was so painful! But I got over that cough. And my nose stopped being stuffy. And my back started to feel better. And I tested negative for COVID...and then I developed another nasty—and very productive (medically speaking)—cough. 

I am so tired of coughing. 

But I didn't start writing to complain...at least...not about coughing.