Jenyfer Matthews

I typically do my grocery shopping on Sundays and I know it’s going to be a fairly good week when I have at least three meal ideas in mind when I go. This was one of those weeks and I tried another new recipe last night: Brazilian Black Bean stew.

I love black beans but finding them in Egypt isn’t always easy. Even when you can find them, they cost about $3/can so I brought 5 lbs of dry beans back with me this summer. With the weather finally cooling off a little, I am more in the mood to cook them.

It takes a long time to cook them. I forgot to set them out to soak overnight (of course) so I set them out in a bowl of water at 8:30am. I figured that I could soak them until about 2pm and that would be enough, right? I ended up putting them in a pot to boil just after 1:30pm and then boiled them for three hours before they were finally soft enough to use. We are lucky enough to have our utilities included with our housing, otherwise I’d have to wonder whether I was saving any money using dried beans over canned!

The rest of the recipe / ingredients were easy to deal with. Boil brown rice with a cup of tomato juice (or in my case tomato paste and salt) – check! Saute onion and garlic – check! Peel and cube sweet potato, then simmer – check! Chop chili pepper… this is where things got a little rough.

I like my food to be flavorful, but I’m not a particular fan of spicy hot so I rarely use chili peppers. I am not sure why I decided to go ahead and toss one in this recipe when I have so blithely omitted them at every other opportunity, but I believed the man at the vegetable stand when he told me this variety of pepper was only mildly hot. Right. Flavor aside, he forgot to remind me to be wary of the seeds and the oils and to wear gloves when cutting them up.

Oh wait – he’s an Egyptian man. He probably doesn’t know anything about actually cooking with them!

Everything was in its pot, happily simmering away, as I chopped up the one lone pepper I bought. I pulled the seeds out – I’m not a total idiot – but I did not wear gloves while chopping. And I did not wash my hands immediately after chopping. I did however rub my face. Who needs blusher when you can just rub chili oil into your cheeks?

OUCH!

On the up side, I did not touch my eyes and the stew was fantastic. Definitely something I will make again – however I’ll likely cut the proportions slightly because we have enough for another meal (or two) On the downside, the skin on my face burned for a couple of hours. I can only imagine what would have happened had I bought the HOT variety of pepper!

Dinner tonight? Taco salad. Making fresh salsa with the rest of the cilantro but skipping the chili peppers!

My children take the bus to school, which means when they lose something at school I have to rely on them to find it because I’m not at the school every day to follow them around. There is a central lost and found and most of the time they find whatever it has gone astray within a week or so. On occasion, however, there are so many things missing that I am compelled to go and look for myself.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate to lose things?

Yesterday was one of those days. On my list of missing items were several water bottles, my daughter’s swim bag (containing a towel, her swimsuit, a NEW pair of goggles and NEW swim cap), and my son’s swimsuit and goggles – which were mysteriously removed from his swim bag which he lost and then later recovered. I had little hope for the water bottles (I’ve since given up sending my daughter with “good” water bottles and instead just reuse disposable Gatorade bottles!), but I really did want to get my son’s swimsuit back. I only bought it at the beginning of the school year and it wasn’t cheap.

Every time I visit lost and found and I am astonished at what has accumulated there. How can people not notice when their children come home minus their school shoes? Their name brand jackets? How can children not notice they are missing their underwear??? The PTA eventually sells the unmarked, unclaimed uniform pieces that end up in lost and found. They must make a killing. There were piles of sweatshirts, shorts, and tops. I could outfit my kitchen with the number of unclaimed plastic containers just sitting there.

I did not find any of our water bottles, though it looks like my daughter isn’t the only one who has trouble hanging on to them. I was happy to find both my son’s swimsuit and his goggles. Why they were removed from his bag remains a mystery – especially as they were labeled with his name. While I was digging, I ran across what looked like a brand new pair of Adidas tennis shoes. Again, how do people not notice these are missing?

I have two theories that actually overlap. One is that the vast majority of the families at the children’s school are employed in the oil field ($$$) and usually have maids who look after the laundry. The maids probably don’t really pay attention to what is coming in – all the uniform pieces look the same and they just wash them and put them away. They don’t have any investment in looking to see if the item is the right size or has someone else’s name written on the collar. (I suspect that this was the fate of my daughter’s swim bag) The other theory is that most of these children probably have so much stuff that if one pair of shoes goes missing they just wear another and no one even notices the missing pair.

My own children have what they need – nothing more, nothing less. I can assure you that I would notice if their shoes went missing. Children grow fast so while it might make sense to have more than one pair of school shoes in case one pair gets lost, it doesn’t make sense financially to me to buy multiple pairs that might only be worn for a short time. Treating shoes like disposable items seems an especially conspicuous waste in a country where there are little barefoot children on the streets selling travel size packets of tissue to make their way instead of being in school. I might be taking an unnecessarily harsh view of things that has nothing to do with the reality of the situation, but every time I go to the lost and found, it’s pretty much the same situation.

To be fair, many of the women I know from the school spend a tremendous amount of time doing charitable work for the poor in Egypt. For me, it starts at home – waste not, want not.

On another note, I took this picture while I was out scouting the neighborhood for Halloween damage on Monday morning. They never even stirred as I walked up to take the picture. I suspect they kept up late the night before!

Can’t you just hear The Beatles singing “All We Need Is Love” ?

I admit it – I took my son trick-or-treating on Saturday instead of on Halloween proper. I had a good reason though.

All hell breaks loose in my neighborhood on Halloween.

It’s truly ridiculous. The US Embassy actually issued warnings about possible trouble on the streets surrounding the American k-12 school in the area because in the past large groups of Egyptian teens have used the occasion of Halloween to gather and make trouble, usually in conjunction with the American school’s Halloween fair. Since you can only attend the fair if you are a student of the school, there is no reason for them to come around except to make trouble.

Lucky me – I live on a main thoroughfare across from the school.

The school had their fair on Friday afternoon, from 4pm-8pm. There were police and barricades all over, but no crowds. Saturday evening I encountered a few groups of teens loitering on the side walk outside of the (closed) school, most of whom were wearing black and devil horns. How did they arrive? I saw their mommies dropping them off by the carload. What were these parents thinking?? The school is closed and there is no actual event for these kids to attend so why facilitate their shenanigans? What did these parents think these kids were going to do with themselves? Fortunately, things never seemed to come to much that night.

Last night was the problem night. I took the children to their tennis lesson about 5pm and didn’t see any signs of trouble. While I was at our club, an Ethiopian friend arrived and said that she had been walking over with her daughter and a child in a car stopped next to them and threw a rock at her daughter! A kid with his chauffeur. Again, what were any of the adults in this child’s life thinking? I don’t care if it was only a small rock, throwing rocks at anyone isn’t funny or cute. If it had been me or my child targeted, there likely would have been an international incident.

Given that the rock incident happened several blocks outside of the usual problem area, I was a bit nervous about walking home. My friend kindly offered me and my son a ride (my daughter was staying for a late lesson). It looked like Mardi Gras on the street in front of my building – there were crowds of teens everywhere, cars, and police trucks. My friend was able to drop me off and get out pretty fast, but the teens were not so kind to everyone. They were throwing eggs on to the windshields of passing cars, at pedestrians, and at each other.

The whooping and hollering and occasional sirens went on for hours. I was fairly nervous about my husband walking home with my daughter at close to 10pm. I recommended they stay on well-lighted streets and that my daughter pull the hood of her sweatshirt up! When they arrived, they said they had walked up the middle of the road and though many masked figures waved fake knives and swords at them, no one threw any rocks or eggs.

So what are all the police doing, I hear you wondering. Not much. Apparently they are afraid to do anything to stop these kids because most are children of the rich and influential in Egypt. I think for the most part they are happy to let them blow off a little steam as long as they contain themselves to throwing eggs. I’d like it if they gave all these kids a real Halloween scare and hauled them all away in a prison truck.

I went out this morning to see if I could spot any obvious damage. There was lots of trash on the ground, but sadly that’s not so unusual. There were many discarded egg cartons and more candy wrappers than usual however. This was a common site:

I have the feeling that the bowwaabs (doormen) of the buildings were up at first light hosing things down because judging only by the volume of the revelry last night, there must have been more mess than what I saw.

It’s a strangely localized problem. I have lived here for 4 years, only about 6 blocks away, and never experienced any trouble. Last year was the first I heard of it because a crowd of kids managed to knock over a light post onto a car. I suppose it could have been worse this year – they might have shown up with flaming torches. Surely their parents can’t really think that this is what Halloween is about? What are they thinking?

My daughter decided she was too old to trick-or-treat this year (sniff) but she still dressed up for the school Halloween fair. Doesn’t she look great?

And don’t tell him I said this, but my son was perhaps the most adorable mummy ever.

Yes, we did trick-or-treat a day early, but you have to be flexible when you live in a foreign country. The kids didn’t mind – they were too hyped up on sugar

When did Halloween get to be so complicated?

Get ready for it… I remember when I was a child, Halloween was thrillingly easy. You put on a costume, you grabbed a bag, and as soon as it looked as if it was getting the least bit dark away you went. There was a period of years where my family lived in a very child dense neighborhood and those are the Halloweens I remember the most fondly. My father would take us around a few blocks of houses, then we’d come back to our house and drop-off loot and go back out with my mom. Everything was pretty well finished and wrapped up by about nine o’clock tops. I don’t know if my memory is accurate in this respect, but I recall collecting a veritable mountain of candy. My sister and I would spend the rest of the evening sorting it out and trading things. The things neither of us liked much went to my father, LOL.

I haven’t lived in the US with my own children but I still do my best to give them a taste of the sort of experience I had. We lived for a while on a residential campus and that was easy – anyone who wanted to trick-or-treat just went out and the houses who were participating decorated their doors. That was a great night all around – and easy. My children were especially young then and it was wonderful fun to watch them toddle up to a door and then race away to the next one as fast as they could.

For several years now, I’ve been hearing how tricky (ha!) Halloween has become in the US. Communities will set times for trick-or-treating and even age restrictions. Okay, that doesn’t seem so bad or unreasonable – who wants a teenager ringing their doorbell at ten or eleven o’clock at night? Now I’m hearing about places that are actually shifting the night trick-or-treating is allowed entirely because it’s a school night or it’s on a Sunday and that might offend some people. Hmmm…last I checked no one ever shifted Christmas because it fell on a school / work day or because it landed on Saturday and that might offend orthodox Jewish people. It seems kind of crazy to me to slap all these restrictions on what really ought to be a simple event.

Unfortunately, it’s almost as difficult here in Cairo to tell the truth. Not only finding houses where the children can go to trick-or-treat but the sheer number of events. Their school hosts a Halloween fair one evening, typically the last day of the week before Halloween. There are a few parties hosted by private clubs. Tonight the big American school in the neighborhood will host their private Halloween fair, which typically also draws hundreds of Egyptian teens to the surrounding streets who focus entirely on the “trick” aspect of things – usually by throwing eggs at any hapless individual who passes by. (Last year they toppled a street light on to a car). The US Embassy has actually issued warnings about avoiding the area on the night of the fair and also on Sunday night (Lucky me, we live across the street!)

Even we have had to succumb to shifting the night of trick-or-treating to Saturday. What can I do? It’s the night when things are being organized – and it has to be organized because how else can you find the participating houses in a neighborhood full of apartment buildings primarily inhabited by people who could care less about Halloween? We’ll be issued a list of addresses to visit before we go out.

If I really wanted to go all out, I could even go back to our old building on Sunday night for one more go-round of trick-or-treating, but I don’t think I’m going to remind the children about that event. Surely by then even they will be weary of dressing up and going out? (Right???)

I decided to take advantage of the “free time” I had on Monday as a result of the maid being here and get some baking done. I made a batch of banana bread muffins and took my cast-iron waffle iron for another spin. That used up about ONE of the EIGHT hours she was in the house. The rest of the time I read and lurked. It was a very LONG day. Next week I pledge that I will do something more productive with my time – like maybe write a book or something.

I still haven’t gotten out my ceramic jack o’lantern decorations, but I did at least hang up a Halloween wall hanging I made several years ago.

I have been in a bit of a creative funk. I want to do something, just didn’t know exactly what. Yesterday I decided that I would get out the wall hanging kit that my step-mother gave me going on two years ago. After the jigsaw puzzle moose, I put off doing this one, but it seemed like the perfect project to get me back in the mood – especially since my work desk is actually usable now.

It’s slightly more sophisticated than the above wall hanging. While fairly easy to assemble, it took forever to cut out all of those intricate shapes!

Maybe it’s just the pretty batik fabrics, but it certainly makes the first hanging look juvenile and clumsy, doesn’t it?

The next challenge is quilting it. I love how the instructions say “may be raw edge applique” – as if I was actually going to sit there and needle turn all those tree branches down! The glue will have to do. It might actually be done before Halloween if I get my butt in gear today and tomorrow.

I looked back in my posts to see if I could link to the picture of the jigsaw puzzle moose and realized that I never did post a picture! I think I had intended on posting it hung in its new home but was then distracted by all the real wildlife in the area. So, much delayed, here is the moose.

(click image to enlarge)

All the varying shades on its antlers and body? All different slivers of fabric – which then each needed to be quilted down. Shudder. Just remembering all those bits and pieces makes me appreciate the simplicity of the witch hanging above all the more!

It’s week two of our new maid and I’m still not sure that I’m totally enthusiastic about this idea.

She only comes once a week, all day on Monday. My biggest hurdle so far is to figure out how to let her go about her business and still use the time productively in other ways. Last week I was in the kitchen nearly the whole time, cooking and baking for my son’s birthday. This week? So far I’m just lurking.

While it’s nice to have someone else do the heavy cleaning, it’s also hard to let go. She doesn’t do things the way I would do things. I’m reminding myself there is a settling in period and to give it some time because it’s nice to have someone else do the heavy cleaning. And it’s only once a week.

One benefit to having a maid come in is the sudden inspiration (shame) to clean up the trouble spots in my home that have been ignored basically since we moved in. For example, the pile of miscellaneous papers, sunglasses, and phone chargers that have accumulated on the counter near the microwave and the drips that have run down the front of my white cabinets. I mean, I wouldn’t want her to think I was a total slob.

Last week, she attempted to tidy my work desk. I didn’t think to tell her not to bother because I assumed that the sheer magnitude of the mess there would keep her away. She’s a professional though and she gave it a shot. I was so embarrassed that I finally got off my behind and did it myself this week. I finally took the bags of clothing destined for the consignment shop over to the shop and sent two other bags of clothes to the charity shop. I sorted through a pile of papers, magazines, and books (most of which was trash) and once I could see it, I washed the desk surface so I could put out my cutting boards.

Best yet, I finally (finally!) made my way through a pile of mending. There were items that had been waiting around for more than a year, many of which I decided I didn’t really need and either donated or tossed in the rag pile. I sewed on buttons and mended ripped seams and darned worn spots. I even dyed two pairs of pants for my son. I couldn’t resist buying them when I spotted them at the thrift store for $0.50 but they were stone colored twill, not an active boy’s best color. Think instant stains. So I bought two packages of RIT dye and dyed one pair dark brown and the other forest green – the colors of dirt and grass, as my husband pointed out.

The desk actually looks like a desk now and not just a pile of trash. I might actually be able to do some quilting there soon. And I really want to try. I seem to have lost my way creatively in all aspects. It’s time to start playing again.

All week I’ve been stewing about my daughter’s soccer team. I wrote before about the children and their bad attitudes. This week it was their parents who got on my nerves.

The team has lost badly several weeks in a row, not because they cannot make goals, but because they cannot stop goals. The only thing most of them can think of is to make a goal but no one wants to put any effort into defense. I appealed to the parents to talk to their children about shifting their focus a bit, both to point out that they need to cooperate and play as a team rather than as individuals and also to realize that you can win a game with 1 or 2 goals but only if you keep the other team from scoring.

The parents are pretty much as bad as the children – they just don’t want to hear about it. One parent responded to my appeal by saying that the purpose of this league is to teach an appreciation of the game and it wasn’t about competition. I’m sorry, but why does anyone sign up for a team sport if they aren’t interested in learning to play well? If you only want to teach your child a love of the game in a non-competitive environment, watch it on TV and spare the rest of us.

It was very tempting to keep my daughter home this weekend and let them sink or swim without her to prop them up but that would be more punishment for her than for them so we went. However, we requested that they put her in a defense position this week. We played what is currently the best team in the league and due to her superb efforts in stopping goals, the team won 4-1. She was the MVP of the game – without her they would have lost by at least 15.

I myself love the beauty of the lesson we demonstrated by putting her in defense, however I doubt that anyone else will have learned a thing. We are continuing the season strictly for the love of our daughter. Only three games and the tournament to go…

October is a busy birthday month for me, and this week is a doozy. Monday was my husband’s birthday, Thursday is my son’s party, and the following Monday is my son’s actual birthday.

Shopping for men is just a pain. By the time they get to be my husband’s age, they can already buy whatever it is they want for themselves. I’ve gone with art for many years – something he likes but won’t buy for himself – but I was tremendously pleased this year when he said he wanted a new watch and preferred to get it for himself. I knew the children would be outraged if there were NO presents for him to open though, so I went out shopping on Sunday to get a couple of presents that the children could give to him.

My plan was simple enough: go to some of the local upscale clothing shops and get him a couple of nice cotton or linen shirts for work. It seemed simple at least – cotton and linen are two fabrics Egypt specializes in. I must have gone into six different shops and came out with nothing. Everything was either too conservative or they didn’t have his size. Seriously, you’d think they were hand stitching the clothes themselves for how few items they have on hand to sell. And what is up with all the women’s clothes in what looks like a men’s shop on the outside? I guess they know who is doing the shopping!

On the way home I stopped in at a discount shop in desperation since I happened to be passing and found two nice shirts for about 1/4 of what one of shirt would have cost me in the boutiques, plus two new tops for me. Win-win.

We tried a new Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood for dinner (fabulous) and had blond brownies with ice cream for dessert. A good birthday.

My son’s birthday isn’t until Monday, but I thought I better get out and shop sooner than later so I could come up with a Plan B if my first idea didn’t work out. I had heard that the Toys R Us in a mall downtown by the Nile had bikes, for a price. I’ve got some fairly particular ideas about what I want in a kid’s bike but I decided it was worth a trip to see if they had what I wanted.

The mall where Toys R Us is located is not that far away in distance, but it took us no less than an hour in stop-and-go traffic to get there. Add in the heat and the exhaust fumes and you can imagine how awful I felt when I finally arrived. I went directly to Toys R Us to see if the trip had been worth it. Success!

They had exactly the size Huffy I wanted and I know my son will love the color combination. Yes, it cost more than it would have in the US – but it is here and it wasn’t so very much more than either shipping a bike from the US or buying a locally made bike with hand brakes so I am a very happy mom. It was worth the two hour commute and the migraine headache to think how happy the boy will be when he finally sees it.

(Don’t hate me but I also stocked up on friend birthday presents and got a little Christmas shopping done while I was there!)

I still have to survive the boy birthday party now, however I negotiated down from a full blown birthday party with twenty guests to a 3 friend sleepover on Thursday night. I even borrowed a tent to pitch in our living room to turn up the fun factor. I’m taking it as a compliment that though we are eating dinner at our club, my son has requested I make him a cake rather than ordering dessert there. Cake, popcorn, a tent, and RETURN OF THE JEDI – what more could an 8 year old boy want?

My son’s party is the first of three from his class this weekend (there are two more next weekend!) In fact, one of our guests is having a party at noon the next day. Think I can get them to settle down by 10PM? Going to give it my best shot!

Some days it’s easier to be in Egypt than others. The days I go to the vegetable stand it’s easy to have a positive attitude. I went a little crazy this week, but how could I resist? Just look at what I got this week for $36:

(click image to enlarge)

Two packages of red seedless grapes
12 plums (Spain)
4 sweet potatoes
1 package of cucumbers
3 yellow bell peppers
1 package green beans
bag of red onions
3 avocados
2 honey dew melons
2 pomegranates
1 GIANT mango
1 package “fresh” raisins
10 bananas

I even got a fresh egg as change for the transaction, straight from the vegetable man’s farm. There’s really no reason not to eat well with all this great food available so reasonably.

And soon the citrus and the strawberries will be in season…