Sunday, September 2, 2012

Surprises

We've had a few interesting surprises this week:

1.  Tonight's arepa experiment was a total success.  I had little going for me in the fridge.  But I had picked up Donarepa brand yellow corn flour in the grocery store the other day, and used milk instead of water (one of the options on the bag) and made very tasty moist arepas.  Layered beef, leftover sauted eggplant slices, sprouts from the arugula I'm trying to grow in pots on the porch, sauted onion, a slice of real cheese (I find that cheese is a concept a bit foreign in the DR--cheese must be imported to have the right taste or consistency, I'm selling out in the locavore department on this one), sliced avocado . . . arepa sandwiches.


2.  A tarantula was discovered (and killed by the downstair's neighbor, thankfully, before I walked past it on the way to the car) right outside our house this week.  The picture is a few hours post-killing:


3.  Neighbor kids were playing ladderball with us and one of the balls split.  One of them pulled superglue out of his pocket to fix it, he was about eight years-old.  Uncanny.

4.  The neighbor started keeping the bigger, louder dog outside overnight.  :(  Bad surprise.  He thinks it's necessary for safety overnight.  It has woken me up almost every night this week--and family members covered the off-nights.

5.  When I ordered the tilapia at the grocery store counter (a much better grocery store, with whole oats for granola and better prices and food arranged in logical ways) after clarifying that I could have the skin and heads and tails removed and everything . . . it turns out that, nope, surprise!, whatever the guy at the counter says, you pretty much get a whole fish.  I did convince him to take the severed heads out of the wrapped package.  But, also a surprise, I had no idea tilapia could taste so good.  The kids were sad that we didn't have any more of it.  Also unexpected were those pinto beans, in the shells when I bought them, that I had thought were purple green beans and had to figure out come supper time.


6.  Someone handed out starfruit at church today and they were both beautiful and pretty tasty.



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