Sour at First and Then Surprisingly Sweet

Sound the trumpets... My dad came yesterday! Isn’t that fabulous? He also brought with him five suitcases. Yes, five. Now, my dad is not a clothes horse, most of it was for us, and a bit for Freedom Firm. When he was packing up all those bags, we kept on telling him no dad, that’s too much...but our hearts were saying yes! Yes dad, bring it all. Bring the marshmallows, bring the baking soda, the new flip flops and sweaters, bring it all! I don’t mean to sound greedy... but it sure is fun.

So, I haven’t pet the cat yet. I know there are many cat lovers out there and I commend you. I feed the cat. This is my job. Jayson has taken to task the idea of making Obi and Pirate friends, kind of Milo and Otis like. Anyway, I came home the other night and asked why Jayson’s shirt was ripped... “Well, I had Pirate and Obi meet...”

Every day I wake up, look outside and wonder if this is the day that the Monsoon Season starts. Is that gloomy of me? Everybody is a bit dooms day about it. Once it starts, it doesn’t completely stop for 4 months. The question is, am I going to embrace the rain like I need to embrace the snow - to survive the Minnesota winters? Can we build a rainman? Can we dig rain tunnels? Hmm, I wonder what fun rain activities we will create? The thing about playing in the rain is this... since we live on a bit of slope here, when it rains lots of yucky things come flowing down the hill. If you haven’t noticed, India has a bit of garbage/animal poo issue... So, what will my kids find in the midst of rain playing, I kind of don’t want to think about it.

We had a party here on Sunday, celebrating Esther, one of FF’s rescued girls. She was baptized, so we decided to party. I decided to outsource the Indian food and I, along with others, made the Western food. I have decided that I do not want to go through the peanut gallery of comments about my lame Indian food making. So, Maria, one of the house mothers, brought a big ol’ pot of Chicken Biryani. And it was mmm, mmm good. Anyway, it was beautiful to watch Esther being celebrated, these girls have just not had much of that in their lives... I will gladly throw them a party any day.

I cooked at Cooking Club at Kurinji - the women’s center - yesterday. Okay, now most of the food that has been cooked has been from the cook’s country of origin. I did not. I couldn’t choose. So, I decided to cook Mexican. Now, I would have to say that Mexican and Indian are quite similar - I am sure both Indians and Mexicans would say different. But in my humble opinion, these are the similarities I see. Both use rice and beans often, tortillas and chapattis are super similar, both types of food make me sweat... So, I thought I would just bridge the cultural gap by cooking Mexican.

I picked up some different fruit this week at the market. My fruit guy always loves giving me new fruit. I think he loves seeing my nonsensical reaction. This one’s called leeche, which I’m pretty sure I had heard of, but maybe that was lingonberries. When I tried it, it was sour at first and then surprisingly sweet. There’s not much to it... I would not say, Oh, I’m so hungry I’ll just have a leeche. It’s more of a bizarre looking fruit that is just kinda fun. But I offered one to my dad today and the wow-factor wasn’t there for him. I’m going to blame jet-lag and hope for better results tomorrow.