Busy weeks behind, busy week ahead

This is sort of a review of the last couple of weeks. The big news, of course, was Joy's baby being born on the 18th. For more pictures than you would probably care to see, go right to Joy and Mark's blog. Abbie assures me that Amilia is very cute and I will fall in love with her. Unfortunately, I will arrive too late to spoil her as Grandma has been working full time on that since a week ago last Thursday.

As I mentioned last time, I was away in Lisbon for a week. The day before I left, I was involved in two projects: a marriage, and a yard clean-up. (Note: the necessity of the latter had nothing to do with the celebration of the former.)

Carina and Matthew live in South Africa and they were married there in August at the Baptist Church where he is on the ministry team. Her family is from Madeira, however, and were not able to attend the wedding, so the couple asked me several months ago if I would be willing to do a wedding blessing here for the benefit of her family, none of whom are evangelicals. Matthew's parents (originally from England, but residing in S. Africa), I found out, are not born-again believers, either. So it was a chance to witness to both families.

Right after the wedding, a group of us went back to Yvonne's house to finish cleaning her yard. I took "before" pictures the previous Saturday, but I have not found a way to get them transferred from my cell phone to the computer. This picture was very close to the end of our task. The whole area was covered in grass and weeds over a meter high.

During my week's stay on the mainland, I was first at a retreat for professors of the Baptist Seminary followed by a retreat for Baptist pastors. These began Monday morning and lasted until noon Wednesday.

Wednesday night began a 3-night course (3 hours per night) on "the Character of a Servant-Leader". There were 25 or so who attended the course. Amilia was born while I was giving the second half of the class on Thursday night. It was about 11:15 p.m. in Lisbon when I got the phone call from Joy herself, saying that Amilia was born about an hour earlier.

My days on Thursday and Friday were further filled by meetings at the Embassy. By Saturday, I was pretty well exhausted. But it was a wonderful experience.

I've been back in Madeira since Sunday night, but haven't had much chance to relax. The Consul-General and a couple of others from the Embassy were here from Wednesday morning until Friday afternoon for a full schedule of events. At least I haven't spent a lot of time brooding over the fact that Abbie's 6000 miles away. Only a few more days to go: Thursday I fly to Heathrow for the night before going on to Dallas the following day.

The Further Culinary Adventures of One Who Should Know Better

Home, Home on the range

Last week I got an e-mail from Abbie's brother entitled "Ziploc Omelets". I won't bother to upload the photos, but here's the text:

This works great!!! Good for when you're alone or when all your family is together. The best feature is that no one has to wait for their special omelet. Have the guests write their name on a Quart Size Ziploc Freezer Bag with a permanent marker.

1. Crack 2 eggs into the quart size Ziploc bag (not more than 2) shake to combine them.

2. Put out a variety of ingredients such as: Cheeses, Ham, Onions, Green Peppers, Tomatoes, Hash Browns, Salsa, Etc.

3. Each guest adds prepared ingredients of choice to their bag and shake the bag to mix them well.

4. Make sure to get the air out of the bag and zip it up.

5. Place the bags into rolling, boiling water for exactly 13 minutes. You can usually cook 6-8 omelets in a large pot. If you have more omelets, make another pot of boiling water.

6. Cut the bags and the omelet will roll out easily. Be pre pared for everyone to be amazed.
7. Nice to serve with fresh fruit and coffee cake; everyone gets involved in the process and it becomes a great conversation piece.
Imagine having these ready the night before, and putting the bag in boiling water while you get ready. And in just 13 minutes you have a nice omelet for a quick breakfast.

"Good for when you're alone..." says the recipe. I'm alone. Have been for over 3 weeks. Tonight will be a good night to try this fool-proof recipe. How can I miss? Any fool can do this, I concluded. The real trick would be finding a 13-minute egg timer, ("exactly 13 minutes"!) but I decided I could set the alarm on my cell phone and clear that hurdle.

I found a Ziplock bag (1 qt....that's what the recipe says), but I cheated. I put the ingredients in the bag first. There were frozen diced green and red sweet peppers, so I put them in the bag, and I had some bacon that I cooked in the microwave and put in the bag. The water was now boiling merrily on the stove awaiting my Ziploc omelet mixture. Cracked the first egg and right into the bag it went. Cracked the second egg and .... and... wouldn't you know it? The top of the bag closed at the crucial moment! I had suddenly lost the knack of keeping the bag open with one hand while cracking the egg. Too late. The egg white came gushing out onto the outside of the bag.

Quicker than I could say, "Wow, look how fast egg white slides down the outside of a 1-quart Ziploc bag!", it was already racing towards the edge of the cabinet and even more quickly speeding down the cabinet doors to the floor. For the briefest of moments I pondered the possibility of grabbing the Ziploc bag and trying to catch the Formula 1 egg white before it reached the finish line. Alas, egg white runs just as quickly down cabinet doors as it does Ziploc bags, and I knew how useless it would be to try to herd it back into the bag once it lay in a puddle on the floor. I resigned myself to having a 1.5-egg omelet. The yolk was still in the egg shell, so it went in the bag.

The rest of the operation went more or less according to plan. Exactly 13 minutes later, I took the bag out of the water and yes, it was a very nice 2-yolk, 1-egg white omelet. Now that I have experimented the recipe, I believe I have the right to comment on it:

1) Next time, I'll crack the eggs into a bowl, then pour them into the bag.
2) 1-qt. Ziploc bag? I don't see why one-pint bags wouldn't work. I'm not using ostrich eggs.
3) 13 minutes? Just for one omelet, I don't see the advantage. Of course, if you're making a lot of omelets, there would be a saving of time.

But in the end, 13 minutes is just about the time it takes to clean up the egg white off the counter top and the front of the cabinets, and chase it around the kitchen. The time was not wasted.

"And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone." (Gen. 2:18)

"Amen," said the man.

Mother and baby are at home...and I will be, too

Joy and the baby (Amilia Kate) went home yesterday afternoon: details and picture are on Joy and Mark's blog.

Abbie was there for the event, but I was away from home, too.  I had suggested Abbie wait until I get there in two weeks before seeing Amilia, but do you think anyone would listen to me? At the exact moment Amilia was born, I was giving a class at the Baptist seminary near Lisbon. It's been a full week that started with a Pastors' retreat and then three nights of a seminar (3 hours per night) and two full days of consultations at the embassy.  

Mother and baby are already home...Grandpa won't be home until tonight.  My trip to the States is set for October 2.

The Culinary Adventures of One Who Should Know Better

A Dilemma

There's an inherent dilemma in Abbie's going away and leaving me here by myself for a month: I have to get by on my own but not look like I get by very well. Ironing of clothes seemed to be a big concern, and one of the ladies of the church has offered to do the ironing. The fact is that ever since I was in university, I have been capable of ironing my own clothes...not fast perhaps, but sufficiently well for my needs. Of course, with Abbie around, why should I iron? In the present situation the solution is obvious: I iron my clothes, but take care to put an extra crease down the leg of the trousers or the shirt sleeve. That means I can do this household task, but Abbie can obviously do it better, so her position is validated.

The same is true of other areas of domestic duties, but the real problem is in the kitchen. I can't afford to eat in such a way that I gain weight (it would look like she can't cook), or that I lose weight (it would look like I can't cook).  The down-to-earth question, however, is much more practical: now that I'm home, what's for supper?

Saturday night, for example, after beating the bushes at Yvonne's house, then having a practice session for the music on Sunday, it was almost 9:00 p.m. and I opened the refrigerator to see the one obvious option: a fennel bulb. I saw it in the store this week, and on an impulse, bought it. Abbie's fixed fennel a time or two, so I knew it was edible. Straight from the refrigerator to Google: "how to fix fennel?" In milliseconds, I was presented with thousands of options, but it was obvious this vegetable was going to be a hit: it's virtually indestructible! You can boil it, braise it, roast it, cut it, chop it, soup it, grill it or slice it raw for a salad. There's no way you can't eat it. Let's go for the salad option, I said to myself. At this late hour, I don't want to be into roasting times...keep it simple.

"Thin slices"...that's what the recipe said. Not sure what that means. I tried slicing the fennel bulb in three different directions and no matter how I sliced it, it always looked more like diced than sliced. Whatever. Raw is raw, no matter what the shape.

Shaved parmesan. Parmesan I like, parmesan I have. So far so good. The recipe pretty much ended about there, but I had some rocket (look it up if you don't know what it is), and I like that, too, so why not? A dozen or so leaves of that added to the mix.  And walnuts! I have walnuts, and some of the fancy salads in the fancy restaurants have walnuts, so why not? A dozen or so walnuts broken up into the salad. I have a fancy salad.

Olive oil. Can't do without that. "Drizzle" would be the way the recipe says to add olive oil. The "drizzler" feature on my olive oil bottle didn't do "drizzle" very well, though. But I figure, if a little is good, a lot is really good. And behold, it was.

So there's the dilemma: I'm in danger of being found out.  Abbie will come back home and say to herself (and to me), "The old coot can cook after all, so why am I in the kitchen instead of him?" At which point a double crease in the pants leg will probably not get me off the hook for ironing, either.

The Eagle has landed

At last report (see yesterday's post), Abbie was already over four hours late taking off from Heathrow, most of which were spent sitting inside the plane. (Keeping the seat warm, I guess.) I sent a message on to Jeff so he could watch the flight progress on the internet. He called at about the time she was supposed to arrive and said the arrival time was to be about 9:30 p.m., which would be 6 hours later than scheduled. That was 3:30 a.m. our time, so I told him not to call me when she got in.

A Victim of the Technology Gap

My computer and my cell phone don't talk to each other. My computer (4+ years old) is fluent in Infrared, but has no clue about Bluetooth. My cell phone (approx. 1 year old) never bothered to learn Infrared, and only speaks Bluetooth. So when I took pictures of what we were doing today, (because I didn't have my digital camera with me), I used my cell phone. If you come over to my house, I'll show you the pictures I took. At the moment, I can't transfer them to the computer...they are before and after pictures of the work we did at Yvonne's house this afternoon.

Yvonne is an English woman who was baptized as a member of our church several years ago. She has never really recovered from the death of her husband in April of last year. She gradually began to show more and more signs of inability to care for herself, and an inability to connect with reality. It's been over two months that she's been in an institution that helps women with varying degrees of mental problems. Unfortunately, she continues to deteriorate physically and mentally. When we went to her house last week to pick up some clothes to take to her, we saw the state of the yard (garden), which had waist-high weeds that were dead, a virtual fire hazard. Inside, in the kitchen, there were still scraps of food and empty milk cartons that had been sitting there for over two months. Last Sunday, I asked for volunteers to come help clean up the yard and the kitchen, at least. There were about 10 of us who worked about 4 hours this afternoon. The kitchen looks clean at least, even though there are days of work ahead, if the cabinets were to be properly cleaned. In the outside clean-up, we had our share of thorns in the flesh...rose bushes, bougainvillea, and brambles. Trivia fact: you may know what bougainvillea is ...a rambling vine-like plant with loads of blooms. Very pretty. But they are also very treacherous. The thorns on bougainvillea are twice the size of those on roses.

We have 20 or so bags of trash and cuttings to be carried off, but we didn't quite finish. Still need another couple of hours to get the rest of the yard cleared. Unless I figure a way to get the pictures to the computer, you'll just have to imagine the before and after. Fill in the (technology) gap.

A Call from America

"You sound like you're breathing hard," she said. Duh... by 4:30, I had already been wrestling with entangled vines and brambles for two hours. When Abbie called from Jeff's house, I was in the process of attacking one of the roots of a vine (which shall remain nameless, as I haven't a clue what it's called), whose runners travelled 15 ft (5m) or more through bougainvillea and climbed walls, invading and entwining itself in everything it encountered. The yard at the back and the side of the house was literally taken over by these vines. Abbie had arrived about 6 hours late (9:30 p.m. Dallas time, 3:30 a.m. here), and she said that the first meal on the plane was about 2:30 p.m. (still on the ground at Heathrow) and the other one about 12 hours later, not long before landing at DFW. But praise the Lord, she got there fine and is spending the weekend with Jeff and Liz before going to Joy's on Monday.

So this evening, after our adventures in the briar patch, we practiced the songs for the service tomorrow afternoon. Sarah (12) played the piano; Orlando, the guitar; I, the harmonica. It's obvious the music won't be the same without Abbie, but there's no reason for the praise to be any different.

The Eagle flew, landed, and can't get off the ground...

It's about 4:30 p.m. here, and I just got a call from Abbie. Instead of being about 4 hours along on her 9.5-hr. flight from Heathrow to Dallas-Ft.Worth, she's still sitting in the plane at Heathrow; the passengers have been boarded since about 12:30. They were fed on the plane (and by now they're fed up being on the plane) and have been given a 5 o'clock possible departure time. So, she'll be delayed 5 hours or so, anyway. I don't know what view she has out the window, but I'll bet it's not one you would willingly choose to sit and look at for hours on end.

The Eagle Has Flown

...about 10 minutes ago. Abbie's flight took off over an hour late, I think, but it did take off. She'll spend the night in a hotel at Heathrow before going on to the US tomorrow. It'll be another 32 hours or so before the Eagle is scheduled to make a final landing at Dallas.