Jenyfer Matthews

As you might imagine, it’s dusty in Cairo, and lucky me, I have a wall of windows in my living room, two stories high on one half of the room. I cleaned them when we moved in back in February – and then it rained almost immediately, streaking them with dust once again. Since it is quite a project to clean them, I decided to put that project off until after the dust storm season had passed. Once that season was finished, I decided to put it off til after the summer, since I always tend to do a deep-clean-nesting sort of thing when I’ve been away for a while.

I hired a maid to come in once a week while I was away on summer vacation, to look after my husband and the apartment. She asked me if I wanted her to clean the windows. Did she even have to ask??? The idea of getting out of that job alone made it worth hiring her.

I’m probably just picky, but I wasn’t impressed when I saw how she’d done. Based only on the swirly streaks on the glass, it was obvious that she did attempt to clean the windows. But since the long handled squeegee I bought was still in the wrapper and the glass cleaner hadn’t been touched, I’m not sure what method she used.

I’ve been home just about a month and the streaky swirls finally got to me today.

Whoever designed and installed the sliding windows in my dining room was clearly a man and / or had a morbid sense of humor. They are at least 3 feet wide and the only way to reach them is to stand on a chair and then lean out. Did I mention I live on the third floor? What I won’t do to get a streak free shine! Even with my squeegee there were places I could not reach without a safety harness. That’s when the old Swiffer handle I have came in handy.

I’ll admit that even with my own acrobatics, there are still a few streaks but the windows are way better than they were before and it’s easier to live with my own streaks now that I’ve been reminded of what a pain it is to clean them. Thank god the windows in the other half of the living room swing in on hinges!

Now all I have to hope is that there isn’t a dust storm anytime soon.

It’s only Monday and I’m already exhausted.

In part, my lack of energy has to do with having had a busy weekend. Two children, two sports activities each = much running to and fro. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know how they do it. They are, however, considerably younger than I am and almost solid muscle.

I happily sent them back to school yesterday morning and got busy with my own to-do list. After changing all the sheets and getting a few loads of laundry going, I went out to do my grocery shopping for the week. Good news was that I had a frequent shopper discount card to use at the store for 10% off my bill. Bad news was that the ATM on my way was out of cash (not an unusual phenomenon).

I tend to rely more on my credit cards when I am in the US, but in Egypt I prefer cash. Not only because Egypt is the land of fraud and my credit card companies tend to put holds on my cards when I use them here, but also because of foreign transaction fees. I only use my credit cards here sparingly. I had a bit more money than I typically need for a weekly shop so I went on my way.

Miscalculation. In addition to groceries, I bought next week’s soccer snacks, plus a few other “fancy” treats for the children’s lunches. In the end I spent nearly all the cash I had, even with the discount, and I had not yet done my produce shopping.

I didn’t let that stop me however. I have never yet taken advantage of it, but I know that my vegetable seller will give credit. I could in fact just pay up once a month if I wanted. I decided in this case that I would try another ATM on my way home and pay him when he delivered my things. When I asked him if this was okay, he not only agreed immediately but he offered to give me a loan so I could do my grocery shopping. How’s that for service?

The second ATM had money and I was able to pay them at delivery. Somehow it doesn’t bother me to pay my credit cards off once a month, but I don’t like the thought of owing the vegetable man money!

I spent the rest of my day in the kitchen washing fruit, doing dinner prep, and planning school lunches for the week – after having cleaned all of the bedrooms and floors upstairs. After the children returned home we did snacks, homework, and headed out for tennis lessons.

Readers have asked me how I come up with new story ideas. The problem is not the ideas – the problem is finding the time to write anything.

My weekend will be spent keeping the children moving in different directions and tired enough that when they are in one place, they’ll be too tired to fight.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Imagine that you are asked to make a quilt for someone. You discuss patterns, colors, and once that is all decided, they give you the measurements. They want the quilt to fit the mattress without too much overhang. You make the quilt to the specifications they requested and when you deliver it, they say it’s too small, can you fix it?

Um, no.

This really happened to me last year. A miscommunication of very irritating and frustrating proportions. Typically you make a quilt either to fit over the top of a pillow or from the bottom of the pillow with overhang at the sides and foot of the bed. She wanted the quilt to have overhang at the head and foot of the bed, as well as the sides. I offered to make her a matching pillow sham, but she did not want one. She wanted me to make this quilt longer and wider.

In the end I made her a whole different quilt and kept the first one.

The quilt was about 42″x73″ finished. I think what bugged me most was that even while I was making it I thought, Hmmm, this sure is narrow, but hey, that’s what she asked for. It is pretty so it wasn’t such a hardship to keep it, but the problem stuck in the back of my brain and whispered, “can it be fixed?”

Since as you all know, I have nothing else to do all day long, I decided to give it a go last week. I’m not adding a lot of detailed sewing instructions because I’m assuming that if you’re reading it for know-how, you probably already know the sewing / quilting basics anyway.

(Click any image to enlarge)

The first thing I had to do was take off the binding on the edge.

I could have cut it off with scissors, but then I would have lost at least a 1/4″ of the fabric plus the seam allowance when I added the next row, which would have thrown off the proportions of the block. Maybe no one would have noticed, but this is a case of if you are going to do it, do it right. At the same time, I had to rip out some of the quilting stitches so that I could lift the top layer of the quilt in order to add the extra pieced row.

Lucky me, I had enough cut scraps to put together another row.

Lay the extra row right sides down with the edge of the quilt, line up the seams of the blocks, and pin. Sew 1/4″ from the raw edge.

Next step: add a layer of batting the width of the extra row. As it happens, I had a strip of batting that was almost exactly the right width and length.

Baste the edges of the batting together loosely and so that they meet edge to edge. This will eliminate any extra bulk at that seam.

Next, add a strip of backing fabric.

If you are lucky, you will have more of the same backing fabric that you used for the original quilt. (Let’s ignore the fact that if you are *really* lucky, this is an issue you will never have to deal with) I did not have enough of the original backing fabric so I found a fabric that matched some of the tones and blended well enough. It’s not perfect, but it is the back of the quilt after all.

Match the raw edges of the new strip of backing to the backing layer of the quilt and sew with a 1/4″ seam.

When the three layers are attached to the quilt body, quilt as desired. (I’ve always wanted to say that)

I had machine quilted the rest of this quilt in-the-ditch (seams) so I did the same with the add-on row.

Last, add the binding edge in the usual way. I use a double-fold binding and sew on with my walking foot.

I just happened to have extra binding all pressed and ready for this quilt as if somewhere in my subconscious I already knew that I was going to have to do this project.

Trim off extra fabric and batting, flip the binding over to the back and whip stitch into place.

Voila! A newly fixed, better proportioned quilt, now about 52″x73″ give or take. It fits my daughter’s twin bed very nicely now.

Can you tell to which side the row was added?

The back doesn’t look as nice, in part because I didn’t use the same fabric.

Also, there is an obvious line of stitching because of the in-the-ditch quilting from the top. Had I done an overall quilting motif in the first place, it would have blended much better. (However, it would have been more difficult to pick out to add the layers as well) The swirls are done by hand, with variegated thread. Perhaps it was petty of me, but I did not add hand-quilting to the do-over quilt that I delivered in the end.

All in all, it probably took me six hours to complete this project, start to finish – about three hours to piece the row and attach all the layers, machine quilt, and put on the binding. Another three or so to whip stitch the binding and add the hand quilting.

Obviously, not all quilts would be so easy to fix. This one had no borders so it wasn’t that difficult to simply add another row. I have another, larger quilt which I’d like to make bigger – the size of that one is no one’s fault but my own because I was anxious to be finished with it. That quilt however has borders and I’d have to add to all four sides to preserve the proportions. I’ve not yet convinced myself that it is worth the effort, but I might change my mind after a month of nighttime tug-of-war with my husband…

It’s a new school year and I’ve made a resolution to take a step back from my children’s homework assignments. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

All in all, they don’t have as much homework on a daily basis as I recall having. My son typically has one worksheet a day, the subject varying by day of the week, plus a short reading book. My daughter’s assignment pattern is similar, only now that she’s a bit older the assignments are more complex and are given at the beginning of the week. It’s up to her to get them done and back when they are due.

My son still requires a fair amount of prodding and encouragement to get things done. But instead of nagging, threatening, or bribing him as I did last year, I’m backing off. If he wants help, I’ll help him. If he doesn’t want to do it, I don’t push – but I remind him that he will have to explain to his teacher and the head teacher (principal) why he didn’t get it done. He procrastinates, but has yet to shirk it all together.

The school issued my daughter a laptop this year, the idea being that they could use it in school and out to complete their assignments. In addition, she has a weekly planner. When I think what I could have accomplished in high school with a laptop and internet access! But I digress. She’s only ten – so far her favorite thing to do with her laptop is to use the webcam to make silly videos of herself and her brother.

I’m trying to stay out of her homework as well, but I haven’t been totally successful on that front. One assignment was to make an oragami crane. The instructions might as well have been written in Japanese as far as she was concerned. She colored the paper and I made the crane. Another assignment involved her finding a news article that discussed “antisocial behavior”. That topic covers a lot of ground so I admit I hovered nearby and provided guidance so that she wouldn’t run across anything too shocking or disgusting. In the end we found an article about a teenager who was arrested for shoplifting 17 tubes of toothpaste.

(Toothpaste?? I suppose he had his reasons. Makes me wonder if there is some ingredient in toothpaste that can be boiled down to crack or something)

When I was ten, my parents both worked full time so I had a key to the house to let myself in after school. I had an older sister who was usually around doing her own thing, but I remember getting my own snacks and doing my homework myself right away because I couldn’t go out to play until it was finished. No one looked over my shoulders or checked up on me but I always got all my work done (never mind the fact that I nearly failed math in third grade) It’s very hard for me to imagine my own children being so self-sufficient, however, they have recently started making their own snacks. Here’s hoping by the end of the year, they’ll both be a bit more independent. Maybe they’ll even have mastered the toaster by then!

This weekend kicks off soccer season – our first game(s) are Saturday morning. My husband volunteered me to organize snacks for my son’s first game, which I suppose is only fair since I volunteered him to be the assistant coach!

Since this is my fourth soccer season, you’d think I wouldn’t stress myself out about what to bring. Nope. I still worry myself over which way to go – healthy snacks that parents will approve of, or sugary snacks that will be popular with the kids. The only improvement this time around is that I didn’t worry about it for as long. I got two varieties of granola bars (sugar with a bit of fiber thrown in), oranges to be cut into wedges, and drink boxes. I refuse to bake because I can’t stand to see a child take a bite of something I’ve taken the time to make and then throw it away. I take it much less personally if they reject my granola bars and oranges.

The worry that I used to waste on soccer snacks has however bled into my children’s school lunches. Their school does not have a cafeteria, everyone has to bring their lunch. Generally speaking, I like that situation because at least I can send them something worthwhile. It does present some challenges on a practical level though because my son has two snack periods and my daughter, who has a longer day, has three. They are both very good eaters so I end up having to pack what amounts to a picnic for each child each and every school day.

Believe it or not, I’m not always at my best at 6am when I have to pack these lunches and I’ve gotten into a rut with packing the same cheese / PB&J sandwiches, a piece of fruit / sliced veggies, and a muffin / granola bar / cookie every day. Even children, who tend to like to eat the same things all the time, get tired of things after a couple of years of the same old things. So I’ve been trying to mix it up a bit.

I bought some small cheese pizzas from a local bakery to take the place of a sandwich, and also bought some “fancy” sandwich rolls. The cheese might be the same, but a change of bread shape adds a little pizazz, as does a slice of tomato. Last week I got some croissants and sent them to school stuffed with smoked salmon. Hummus topped with pomegranate seeds was a hit and I’m planning to make a pasta salad this week for a change of pace. Once a week or so I give them a real thrill and toss in a bag of chips or a candy bar.

It’s only the first month of school though. We’ll see how long I can keep this up.

Overall, I don’t think they have anything to complain about. I was lucky to get cheese and crackers and maybe a Little Debbie snack cake. My son prefers spreadable goat cheese with jam. How long before he starts demanding a small carafe of wine instead of his usual juice box?

As I expected, it’s been an adjustment getting used to the time change and getting up while it’s still dark outside. I’ve had to really pull myself out of bed every morning this week by sheer force of will and responsibility. If I don’t get up, the kids miss school – incentive enough to get up and going.

This morning my son woke me up at 4am – he’d sneezed out a loose tooth and felt the need to tell me about it IMMEDIATELY. I suppose that’s a good thing as I was able to help him arrange things so that the Fairy could make a last minute stop before dawn. However, while he was able to get back to sleep, I was not. Sigh.

When I was a child and had a loose tooth, I would wiggle and worry that tooth until I got it out. It sometimes required liberal applications of Now & Later candies (a sort of taffy), biting down firmly and then pulling up fast, but I was determined to get that tooth out and cash in. My own children are strangely reluctant to pull their teeth – which in turn leads to some really odd and often inconvenient retrieval situations.

My daughter’s first loose tooth was hanging by mere strings but she refused to pull it. She ended up knocking it out with the straw of her drink during a movie – which in turn meant that I was on the floor of the theater looking for it under her seat with the flashlight on my cell phone amongst all the spilled popcorn kernels. I found it and we put it under her pillow that night – which just happened to be the same night that we were going on our summer vacation and also moving away from the United Arab Emirates forever, so it’s not at if I didn’t have other things on my mind. The Tooth Fairy paid her $1US which she was determined to spend in the Dubai airport if possible (she ended up having to wait).

Her brother helped with the removal of her second tooth, while they were playing in the bathtub. He was sticking his finger in her mouth and she was trying to bite him. She got him just as he pulled back. Ouch.

Another of her teeth fell out in the middle of the night while she was at a sleepover. The only two that didn’t actually fall out because of gravity were pulled by a dentist because they were in the way and she was too passive to pull them herself. That cost so much money that I told her that I didn’t think the Tooth Fairy paid for dentist assisted extractions! She got the next couple out on her own.

My son was much more proactive about his first tooth – he was so determined to get it out that he gave it a mighty twist and just ripped it out. The blood and pain put him off of that plan for the subsequent teeth. He is on #5 now and his new strategy is to amuse his friends by twisting the loose tooth backwards and smiling. Once he’s done that trick a few times, the tooth usually falls out. Eventually.

Between them, we’ve got a whole lot of teeth to go. I wonder how long it is until one of those teeth just goes missing entirely? Or until one of them wakes up and catches the Fairy?

How much did you get for your teeth from the Tooth Fairy? I got about $0.25 and my children get $1 or 10LE (Egyptian) but a friend recently told me that her kids get $10. I hope that my children and her children never get to talking or there is going to be trouble!!

It didn’t take me very long to kick the jet lag from my return trip, but I’m not out of the woods yet.

Egypt practices daylight savings time, but so far as I can tell, the Egyptian government seems to change the clocks at their whim. No one ever seems to know what it’s going to happen. How does anyone find out? A rumor spreads, then people wait around to see if it is announced in the local papers. Perhaps there is a master plan somewhere but I have yet to see a calendar printed with the date as you do in other parts of the world.

This year, the clocks changed back a bit early because of Ramadan – no surprise because Muslims break their day-long fast at sunset and they wanted the sun to set as soon as possible. Here’s the absurd part: now that Ramadan is over, instead of just rolling with it, the government is actually going to change the clock again – “springing forward” an hour – only so that they will then “fall back” again on October 1st.

It’s amazing how much difference an hour can make in your day and sleep cycle so ask me how much I’m looking forward to losing, then gaining back, then losing an hour three times within a month??

By the way, the recycled Frankenstein bicycle has been put to rest. We patched up the flat tires, only to discover that the handlebars were loose and damaged in a way that could not (easily) be repaired. Because I am, well ME, I scavenged the tires and took back my tubes before we put it out for the garbage collectors to take away. Now I have a month or so to find a good quality new bicycle for my son’s upcoming birthday…

The best cover of this song I’ve ever seen. Have a great weekend!

I have spend some time just about every day this week scrubbing my iron pot. The vinegar did next to nothing to crack that crusty finish, so I stepped it up a notch to oven cleaner. That helped, but I’ve had to wash and re-apply several times, and unfortunately the thing that seems to be the most effective is good old-fashioned elbow grease. (Where’s a vat of lye when you need one??) Most of the worst of the crust is gone now, but there are still black patches. Though my ultimate goal is to reblacken the whole thing, I feel like since I’ve come this far, I might as well see it through and just take the whole thing down and start fresh. Ironically, the bulk of the work at this point is being done on the outside of the pot, which has nothing to do with the actual cooking surface. I hope to get to the somewhat easier re-seasoning part next week. I’m thinking of deep frying some sweet potato fries and possibly some fish to christen it.

I haven’t forgotten my resolution to try one new recipe a month, though I did get a bit behind for August (I first typed “big behind” – that too!) In order to catch up, I made a couple of new recipes in the last week – one for August and one for September. And since the month is still young, maybe I’ll even get ahead of myself.

Or not.

Anyway, the first recipe I made was for a vegetarian jambalaya, out of New Vegetarian Cuisine: 250 Low-Fat Recipes for Superior Health. We’ve had that cookbook for ages, not sure why it took me so long to notice this recipe. I made a few changes – I substituted brown rice for bulgar (texture) and kidney beans for pinto beans (color). I also used canned tomatoes instead of salsa and yellow peppers instead of green (prettier). That’s the beauty of jambalaya though – it’s a very flexible recipe. Everyone was very enthusiastic about dinner that evening – we finished nearly the entire pot! A vote of approval if ever there was one.

This week I made homemade tortillas. It’s actually a lot easier than I thought it would be, HOWEVER, I definitely need more practice. I have granite counters, to which the tortillas were sticking like gum so I used a lot of flour. Too much flour. So much flour that the tortillas were dusty. They were however tasty so I’m willing to try it again. I’ve done a little research and have a few tips which should help next time. For instance, I was supposed to let the dough rest, but did not. Where’s a Mexican abuela (grandmother) when you need one?

I also took my newly seasoned waffle iron for a spin (Rome’s #1100 Old Fashioned Waffle Iron, Cast Iron). I did use the recipe on the package label so maybe I am actually one new recipe up. I need some practice getting the temperature of the iron right, but hey – the waffles didn’t stick and were very tasty so I guess I did something right.

This weekend? Not cooking. Nope. I’m done for the week.