Ploofle

Goodreads’ to-reads have expanded greatly due to NYTime’s publishing a list of top books (to them at least). The review sound interesting, so maybe someday I’ll get to em, as most of my to-reads aren’t available in the Peace Corps’ library.

to those who have turkeys and cranberries, oh how I wish I was with you. I’ll be going to two celebrations – one was a sort of office party, which happened yesterday (Thursday for me) and one tomorrow, which is PCV-based. Yesterday’s “bird day” (as they call Thanksgiving in the office due to previous year’s handprint turkey construction paper project) involved a sort of potluck. Stacey organized it but about 3 of us brought potluck spirit and food and the other dozen or so combined money to buy lots of meat and rice and veggies. Thus, we had meat and rice hooshor (empanada-like), carrot salad, pizza, pigs in blankets, boiled horse, boiled veggies, candy, and rice soup with horse meat. Guess which dishes the foreigners brought?

There was a bit of tippling as per any Mongolian celebration but mostly I sat at my desk after lunch feeling immensely sleepy. I collected the bones to take back to Daisy, the dog I’m dogsitting, so that hopefully she won’t eat my linoleum/wood molding/plumbing/door insulation/her poop (which is our past history).

Before tomorrow’s meal preview, I’m going to talk about the past week’s…I got to eat horse meat chili – which was amazing (chili packet from home, you know), zatarain’s red beans and rice from a box (drool), and an apple tart (homemade and “test” pie leftover from last night’s apple pie prep for Saturday). As a result I’m feeling pretty happy – sometimes I feel like I eat random food here to satisfy a craving that well, won’t be satisfied with local food – and that craving’s not around now. I guess this is our version of holiday food here…

Other random bits – it’s much warmer today than it’s been for the past few weeks – I’d say maybe upper 40s – but also it’s become incredibly windy overnight. Every so often I look up over the edge of my computer screen and see clouds of dust blowing across and obscuring buildings. I can also see nearby white ger roofs and stove flaps rippling vigorously. I’m working on coding the qual. data from a project here to improve analysis and it’s slow going – lots of answers given in the free response, and many free response questions. Bleh.

Ok, the big event: thanksgiving 2008. We’re making the following:
Chickens
Stuffing
Mashed Potatoes
Pumpkin soup
Green bean casserole
Corn casserole
Gravy
Pumpkin pie
Apple pie
Kahlua
various items I don’t recall

I’m in charge of Kahlua, pumpkin pie, and corn casserole, and the Kahlua’s done, the pumpkin’s pulped, and the casserole is pending. We’re making everything with maybe 4 burners and 2 overgrown toaster ovens so it should be interesting. By the way making pumpkin puree sucks with said toaster oven and a vodka-cum-kahlua bottle used as a smasher. The chickens will be bought today and likely killed tonight, as we’re not sure where we could store two live chickens overnight…I helped Jen with making pie crust and I’m pleased at the outcome – I think I’m better at crusts than biscuits or bread, as the pigs in blankets turned out a little crispy rather than fluffy. I can’t seem to make rolled and cut biscuits to “work”. Jen says she can make good biscuits though so I’m going to watch her closely tomorrow to see what I’m doing wrong. Maybe we’ll even have White Russians (with UHT milk). I’m totally looking forward to this food, but definitely missing sausage for the stuffing and pecans. Eh, well, Bonnie says we can have another holiday dinner when I get there! I definitely miss having dinner with friends and getting up at 6am to start and all…but maybe if people are around when I cook the dinner they can eat it too – a turkey for two is a tad excessive

Tags: bad biscuits, books, food, horse meat, pie

As pointed out by my ever-alert friends, I am being bad. There are some nice Ash* people too that I mentally misplaced, so it’s totally mean of me. Though I will leave up my post, let it be known that I am duly chastened for making a sweeping generalization.

Ahem. Sorry Ash-from-down-the-hall-at-old-work. I like you

On the other hand…the trip yesterday was pretty cool. Mankhan soum is about 80 km south of Khovd center and there are a surprising number of trees out there. One of the other passengers, a Ministry of Health person, said that they planted them in the 30s or 40s. They were probably about a foot in diameter and leafless.

On the way there, we stopped at the lake where I’ve picnicked with coworkers before – except now you can walk on it. I don’t think I like the concept of frozen lakes – they’re scary and can crackle alarmingly:

We also went to a place with cave paintings – I was told it is the largest cave (painting? not sure) in Asia and 10th-largest in the world. On the way, the soum (county) governor’s jeep got stuck, but we eventually got it out:

We got to the caves around dusk (6ish pm) so we couldn’t see too much. The best view I got was from the camera flash here:

It was scary in that it’s a slightly steep switchback up to the cave and some people were wearing heeled (as in more spike than heel) boots. Tumbling would not be good. I also saw some rocks that were very strange – a grayish metallic sheen and they tended to fragment in sheets. Given the randomness of contamination here (fueled by my paranoia or newspaper reporting on mining) I left it, though.

Maybe when people (coughbonmaybecough) visit Khovd we could go out there again.

Tags: caves, ice, sorry to all the ash's, soums

This morning, walking over a cold, kinda squeaky-crunchy layer of snow, I watched a scrum of dogs.

Just sayin’

Secondly, Friday will also be a Fry-day – woohoo! Clash of the titans – latkes versus falafel, with a concrete barrier of yogurt and grease uniting the two. Deep-fry-a-thon mini version.

I also bought some what I think is shortening (beef fat? In a large white squarish chunk?) to make borsak, a pastry similar to beignets. It turned out well, and I may use the fat again for the latkes – although that seems inappropriate for some reason.

Finally, I am going out to a soum (county) today with UNFPA. It’s rural and I hear very beautiful. So I have packed accordingly loaded for the proverbial bear: extra long johns, food, water, flashlight, matches, candles, heavy gloves, etc. in case we get stranded. I hear there are cave paintings there so I’m looking forward to that as part of the non-official work before getting back in this evening.

Tags: caves, dogs, food, frying

it’s a tad scary to see how many people from Garland are engaged or married…you can kinda see via Facebook searches when people’s names are hyphenated or what not…

Not that I’m not attached or anything, but it’s a strange thought nonetheless for people who I really do remember as *young* from middle and high school.

Some even have popped out babies! Ewww….

This implies that I too am getting older, I guess. Though I certainly don’t feel it except for being perhaps grumpier.

Speaking of grumpy, I would never name my child Ashley, Ashleigh, Ashlee, or Ashlea. My experience with the Ashes of the world vary from neutral to irritation. Pfft.

Tags: nostalgia

For most of the weekend there was no power which more than anything hindered my playing of Pirates! Gold (on an old Sega Genesis emulator, no less) and finishing the Battlestar Galactica DVD that Amy and Jordan sent me. Speaking of which, I will need to email em to find out whether that was the movie or the series – the special effects were very good and I can’t imagine such nice explosions through a several year-long project.

The other thing I determined is that I think the dvd drive on my laptop is wonky. It’s given me I/O errors for several cds/dvds I’ve used with it, and the DVD viewing has been stuttering/jerky to the point where I couldn’t even watch the last 8 minutes of the aforementioned sci-fi series. When I bring it to work, though, no I/O errors when copying or anything…so that may be something else I need to remedy when in LA. Bleh.

So, my feeling on the DVD-sans-last-8-minutes – gritty version of Star Trek with a more Buck Rogers feel and more gratuitous parts (you know, for those who watch scifi for the attractive alien women) So it’s been quite good. I remember as a kid switching off Battlestar Galactica if it came on because all I wanted to watch was Buck Rogers. Ah, how times have changed.

It’s been nice to do some super geeky things…normally I don’t have time for it…but I’ve also been working on learning guitar chords too. I figure that if I know enough of em, I in theory can play a tiny bit more than I can already. So far I know all the basic key chords (C, G, F, etc.) and the relevant minor/dominant chords for C, and some of the alternate chords for C. Maybe this will improve my concept of theory by osmosis as well.

Not having power isn’t too big of a deal. In Khovd generally speaking no power also means no heat and no water. I have candles and matches, and Peace Corps gave us propane stoves and I have fuel canisters, and I have a 15 liter water barrel full of water. The apartment walls are very thick, so it doesn’t get too cold, and the heavy-duty sleeping bag helps a lot. What suffers most is my laundry and my hair, as I’m down to about weekly baths (and twice-a-week hair washing if I’m lucky) and I don’t want to waste my water reserve on either. Besides, I draw the line at cold water bucket baths. It needs to at least be warm.

I also tend to put off cooking – but maybe that’s due to all the reading I’m doing instead. I got a delicious meal of imported red beans and rice where I contributed what was supposed to be corn bread but due to circumstances became hoecake – sort of. Still tasty and all, but not quite what was expected.

We’re gearing up for Thanksgiving – or at least talking about what to cook. Cranberry sauce is out, as is turkey, but we’re discussing the mechanics of finding and killing chickens…

Tags: cold, food, geek things, power, thanksgiving