Love is in the air

For Pete at least, he's gotten two valetine's day cards in the mail in the last week.


Tangible love will come on Friday however - that's when Grandma Connie is arriving for a whirlwind one-week visit. It will be her first international flight across the atlantic - share your travel strategies with her. Those trips eat you up and spit you out.

We've just been doing the same old, same old. Rich bought a small crate (very large box) of tomatoes at the Turkish market on Sunday for 25 kronner, that's $5 and price that can't be beat, especially here. So he spent Sunday evening slicing and dicing. Plus - Monday night I made stuffed tomatoes; Tuesday night was a tomato (& eggplant, & zuchinni, & red pepper) pasta sauce; and tonight will be something mexican with a big old bowl of pico de gallo.



From Trout Fishing in America:
Pico de gallo, you oughta give it a try-o
Even if you're from Ohio, it'll get you by-o
Don't get it in your eye-o, unless you want to cry-o
So c'mon, don't be shy-o, get you come some pico de gallo!

It's got jalapenos, I reckon y'all have seen those
They're kinda hot for gringos, and probably flamingos
Just add some tomatillos, onions and cilantro
Lime juice and tomato, you got pico de gallo!

I was diligent in learning the names of baking ingredients (like brown sugar, oatmeal, powdered sugar) so that I could try to make Pete some cookies. I found what I needed to make a recipe for basic eggless oatmeal cookies. They were yummy right out of the oven, but a couple of days later they are cement patties. Next time I'll make the CHEWY eggless oatmeal cookie recipie. I will also use butter versus margerine - the margerine here is very lardy, I could barely wash it off my hands.


I had a bit of a freak out on Monday. I started looking at the bus schedule to get Pete to and from school. For most areas a bus comes by every 15-20 minutes. But since we live in a little satellite city just outside of the main city, the bus doesn't come back but once every hour. Because it will take time to get off the bus, walk to school, get Pete settled, and get back to the bus...I'll have missed one bus and would then have to wait for the next hour bus. So, taking Pete to and from school will take 4 hours total, not counting the time to walk to the stop here in our little town. That would be ok on the crappy crappy days, but what about every other beautiful sunny summer day???

I knew I could get there by bike...you can get anywhere by bike if you want to. So I checked out a map and it showed the trail going right from our town to the school. I did a trial trail ride yesterday morning (Rich was around, the Danish teacher was coming for our lesson). It took me 1/2 hour there and back. I'm sure it would be more pulling a trailer, but even 1 hour is better than 4 hours. Mom (my mom) has been hunting for my request for a trailer (there are like $800 here), and hopefully it will be arriving along with her on Friday.