Missing As

Lately I have been missing New Zealand. A lot. We have been home for a year now, so I've utterly forgotten the things that drove me nuts about living there. Well, okay, I haven't forgotten all of them. But usually when I think of New Zealand, I think of only the great things that I miss.

I miss the sheep.

I miss the foliage.

I miss the Dunedin Botanic Gardens.

I miss the close proximity to Milford Sound.



I miss long walks on the beach.

I miss the views from our flat.

And mostly, I miss our friends:

Predictable and Literal

A few months ago, Eric and I decided to give our nieces and nephews "pope names," which we have posted on our family blog. (Examples of pope names: Katy the Incorruptible, Joseph the Jovial; Caleb the Gregarious.) While trying to come up with one adjective for each of our ten nieces and nephews on his side, we enlisted the help of his sister and her husband. Our discussion soon turned to appropriate pope names for the adults in the family as well. The only one I remember is the one that Matt created for me:

Sherry the Literal

Appropriate, no?

Last week some time I was thinking about how people often use the word "literally" incorrectly, and this led me to remember my pope name. Then I started thinking about how I am the epitome of an open book. Matt had almost no problem coming up with one word to describe me and my personality. Because it's not just the fact that I am very literal, but that I will also correct you when you are not. For example, if you tell me "one minute," I might time you. If you don't mean "one minute," then you should say something else that means "shortly." This train of thought led me to this memory:

Sophomore year of college I was playing games with roommates, and maybe other people in our apartment. Janssen was wearing a Halloween shirt, but it wasn't Halloween season, and I told her so. She reached into her pocket and handed me a piece of paper that said, "Sherry will be the first person to point out my Halloween shirt." (Or something to that effect. Correct me if I'm mistaken in my memory, Janssen.) She had put that slip of paper in her pocket when she put her shirt on.

Which makes me wonder - should my pope name be Sherry the Literal or Sherry the Predictable?

Obscure Kitchen Tool

My newest obscure kitchen tool that I adore is my pestle and mortar. Eric bought it for me at Christmas, and I finally got around to using it today - to ground up some cardamom seeds. It was a lot of fun. As you can see in yonder first photo, the seeds started out very non-ground up. But I can assure that when I was finished putting in a teensy bit of elbow grease they were finely ground powder.

Before obtaining my pestle and mortar I used a variety of methods when encountering a recipe calling for ground spices when I only had the whole ones:

1. Use whole ones anyway and hope that it didn't damage or otherwise negatively affect the dish being prepared. Usually for things like coriander seeds, this was okay, but not great.
2. Try to crush the seeds with a bowl and spoon. This was usually rather ineffective.
3. Put the seeds on a sheet of wax paper and cover it with another sheet of wax paper. Then pound the seeds with a rolling pin, which was the heaviest tool I had in my kitchen. This only made holes in the wax paper, and wasn't particularly effective in crushing the seeds.
   

Now I can cook properly, and I never imagined that grinding up seeds could be so satisfying. And I'm not just saying that; it really was an enjoyable experience. Now, I'm not saying that everyone should have a pestle and mortar, but I love to make Indian food, and there are a lot of seasonings that need crushing. Now that I have a pestle and mortar I can buy more of my seasonings whole, which will be nice because grinding them immediately before using them makes them taste a bit fresher.

Review: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin

I feel a little bit behind with this whole Greg Mortensen phenomenon. Apparently he came to speak at BYU pretty recently, and Eric's dad had kind of been raving about him and his book ever since then. Only, Gordon hadn't actually READ the book; he'd just heard it was good. I talked to him about it on Thursday, when I had about 100 pages to go, and he was about 50 pages in. He and I had pretty much the same thought: Great story, not so great writing.

With that said, I think that everyone should learn about what Greg Mortensen is doing in Pakistan and Afghanistan; it's pretty amazing.

In short, he's building schools for children, especially girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He believes that education will allow people in remote villages in those countries to improve their lives and will keep them away from terrorism.

On the whole, the people are really grateful for what he is doing. There have been some extremists who do not approve of educating girls, but most of the people in these villages recognize that educating girls actually helps the villages the most because the girls will stick around instead of abandoning the villages for the big cities.

If you really want to learn about Greg Mortensen's mission in the Middle East (and you should) I would recommend listening to interviews or speeches or whatnot. The book, unfortunately, is not stellar.

This and that

Good news! My drawing pencils have been located. This means I can't use the "My husband can't remember where he packed my drawing pencils," excuse for not practicing. I'll have to go back to the old standard, which is, "I thought about practicing a lot, but I did other stuff instead."

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Plus, now that I've spent a lot more time looking through all those packed boxes, I have a much better idea of where things are, where they should be and where they might actually be. If I am wise then I will spend some time in the next few months sorting through some of those boxes and throwing stuff away so I don't have to move it again. Although, I do not really see this happening.

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We got a new video camera for Christmas, and we haven't really used it yet. We'll have to find something worth filming so we can play with our new toy.

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We are thinking about going to Europe this year for our fifth anniversary. Eric even put together a slide show with cities we could visit, and he made a list of ticket prices to various cities in Europe, which I then put into a spreadsheet. Then we searched for the costs of flying to those same cities from D.C. and using our Southwest Airlines credits to get us to D.C. to see if that would bring the cost down (as opposed to flying out of Salt Lake City). It was spreadsheet bliss! Next to calculate the costs of hostels in different towns in Central Europe. The fun thing about planning possible trips is that even if you don't end up going, you still get to make spreadsheets!

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A couple of weeks ago our niece and nephew (eight years old and six years old, respectively) rode in our car, Rusty. He is a 1996 Mazda 626 with 164,000 miles, and we love him. We especially love him after purchasing Dudley and having him all fixed up. Anyway, the point is not that Rusty is awesome; the point is that the kids were thoroughly entertained by our manual windows, and they wanted to take turns rolling the windows down.

Wanting what I can't have

Even with my lips broken out in blisters and the skin surrounding my mouth covered in a sandpapery rash caused by an allergic reaction to eating mango, all I could think when I saw Eric eating a mango just now was, "Mmmmmm... I want that."

Why, of all the fruits in the world, must I be allergic to mangos? Why not apples, which I'm not that crazy about? Or passionfruit, which smells like cat pee? Or pomegranates which I hardly ever eat and hardly ever see in stores? I guess this is just my cross to bear in life.