The Incentive We Needed

Having a houseguest has made us think outside the box for the past couple of weeks. Instead of our normal ho-hum routine we have tried to spice it up a bit and give Tatyana a taste of Rwanda. Last Friday we skipped naptime for O (ohhh horrors for us sleep-nazi’s) and headed South to the town of Butare. If you “trip-advisor” Butare, you won’t find much listed. The National University of Rwanda is there and the only ice cream shop in the country and that single fact alone was enough to get us in the car. I had heard from colleagues that there was a pottery and tin co-operative someplace down there as well. So we drove down and referencing our brandt tour book of Rwanda were able to find the pottery shop! I absolutely never thought we would find it…we turned right at a blue sign off the main road and kept driving down a dirt path until we came to the end of the road and then, after asking a bunch of giggling school kids which fork in the road to take, we found it. All the potters were finished for the night but we got to check out their wares and make a couple of purchases. We had a quiet night at a rat-trap motel with a rousing game of scrabble, fish brochettes and Eric’s special mixed drinks. The next morning we checked out the University as there were supposed to be a troup of monkeys that hang around the stadium – the monkeys were gone cause there was a bunch of students playing football. We quickly dissed the University and headed off for the all important ice cream shop. YAY! It was a great treat. Then Tatyana and I headed to the National Museum and Eric and O headed around back to play with balls and run around. Interesting displays and beautiful gardens. We started our trip back with a stop at a "tinnery" (is that really even a word?) and spent some minutes among beautiful things.

The pretty things!

I really need to practice my French

So many choices...

The sign for the pottery cooperative

I Scream...You Scream...!

YUM!

Do you Jackfruit?

We all went to the big market on the Monday of Memorial Day and got our fill of produce, crafts and loud noises. I can't remember how the subject of jackfruit came up but it did and then Tatyana managed to find the only jackfruit in the entire market. They said it came from Uganda. Do you like jackfruit? Honestly, I had never tried it before. Turns out (thanks to google) that its in the mullberry bush family and related to the breadfruit - but the breadfruit is a starchy version.

So here we are with a giant jackfruit (which can grow to be 80 pounds) and our biggest knife! It took a bit to cut into it and it had white, stringy, sticky juice that was close to impossible to clean off. It took Tatyana about an hour to clean out one little piece to eat. Holy smokes it was great but definitely took alot of elbow grease.

We ate the one little piece and sent the rest to O's school for his "bring a fruit to school" day!

We had to use the BIG knife!

Crazy looking insides - super sticky with gigantic seeds

interesting shape

My Recent Faves

My name is...

I feel like the proudest Mamma Bear on the block. Look what Orion did for his homework last night. He was supposed to write his name and he did this all by himself. With maybe only a little prompting from Big Daddy.

8th Annual Kigali Peace Marathon

Talk about inspiring...he was running the marathon

The starting line of the marathoners



Yay! Team Ali-Dembrow



Team Shedd

and the winner is...Orion!






A Little Bit About Breakfast

From The Joy of Cooking - 1964 edition

the best oatmeal pancakes (sorry...griddle cakes) in the world

Chris's infamous bacon weave...a beauty!

I am not a huge breakfast fan...never have been and probably never will be. You know those people who just love themselves a good brunch or a hearty sit down on the weekends? Just not me! That is not to say in my old age I have not grown to appreciate a fine breakfast but I much prefer a cocktail or an appetizer any day. I digress when I start talking about cocktails and appetizers. So O boy loves breakfast and one Saturday morning with nothing better to do I pulled down my old ancient copy of the Joy of Cooking and looked at pancake recipes. What I found was this recipe for oatmeal griddle cakes that I have basically made every single Saturday since I found the recipe. They are fantastic! O has oatmeal every morning for breakfast from a giant vat that I make in advance. At the end of the week there is always enough left over to put together a batch of these lovely pancakes. I have found they really are best if you mix them up the night before and leave overnight in the fridge. Makes for super easy cooking on the bleary Saturday morning at 6am.

On another note...meat! Our friend, Paul, was posting about bacon the other day, which got me to thinking about the bacon weave that our other friend, Chris, made on a ski trip a couple of years ago. Amazing! I have never made one and frankly it kinda creeps me out but damn if it doesn't look pretty. OK enough about breakfast, its time for a drink!

I can write it...myself!

A Rainy Sunday Morning

Mamma mamma mamma...come quick I have to show you something

Wowza! Look at that crazy mud puddle!

"I love my thomas the tank engine boots"



I think I have mud on my eye

Tour O' the Backyard

I have fallen in love with our backyard again. Sometimes I get annoyed with it - I am not sure why - all the leaves that continue to fall from the avocado tree? all the weird weeds that grow? all the strange pruning that seems to happen when I am not home? But lately I have been having a new appreciation for the interesting mix of flowers that just keep popping up. These are mostly annuals (or they would be annuals in colder climes) but here they grow, bloom, wither and bloom again. It's really pretty amazing. It's different to live in a backyard that is only yours for a short period of time. We only planted a few of the plants - most came with the house and were mature when we moved in. Some have been mangled beyond recognition...we have a rose bush that my friend Heidi would shudder at. It's been pruned so wrong so many times the poor thing is one long branch. There is not a huge feeling of ownership that comes when you own a house and all the hard work and investment is yours but still, lately, I have really been digging our lush green oasis in the city.

Our pomegranate tree. We have never had more than 1 or 2 fruits at a time. Then we pruned a bit, and holy shit...there are at least 50 pomegranates on this tree...

A huge ass avocado that fell from our tree - about 50 feet in the air. I keep thinking I should make Orion wear his bike helmet when he is playing in the backyard.

This is a start that I smuggled in from one of my trips to Bujumbura - I don't know exactly what it is but it gets these crazy green balls on it and these amazing pink flowers.

New set of bananas

Eric's pineapple plant

New set of sunflowers

Uganda Flora and Fauna

Both Uganda and Rwanda use eucalyptus trees for lots of things - in Uganda they use them to hand carve wooden canoes. On our weekend get away we took a boat ride to one of the 29 islands in Lake Boy. There we walked around a bit and saw some amazing old trees. Check out the peeling bark.

On one of our hikes we walked by this little group of handmade houses. The material was so pretty - it was rough and you could see some sort of straw in it.

I am in love with these weaver birds - they are so loud! It's like they party all day and night.