Bagels
My dear friend, M, once asked if she could send me anything with her sister who was coming to visit. I inherited my mother’s desire for having lots of different recipes available to try. So I asked her to send me recipes. She sent me a bagel recipe. I miss bagels. Every once in a while, I wake up and tell Joél we should go out for breakfast for a bagel with cream cheese. But they aren’t available here, unless you make them. I have made M’s bagels twice and they are lovely.
Here’s the recipe so you can try them too (especially for those who aren’t in bagel land):
Bagels
¾ cup water
1½ tsp yeast
1 tbsp oil
2¾ cup flour
1 tsp salt
Combine ingredients. Knead and let rise (dough will be stiff). Knead again for 10 minutes. Shape with 2 inch hole. Let rise on greased cookie sheet until almost doubled. Drop into boiling water with 1 tbsp salt or brown sugar, 2 minutes each side. Drain. Coat with desired toppings. Sprinkle greased cookie sheet with cornmeal. Bake at 400º for 23 minutes.
Yield: 6 bagels
This time I experimented. I used half whole wheat and half white flour. Then I added ½ teaspoon of garlic powder and 1 ½ teaspoons of mixed herbs (a mix I get here: thyme, sage, oregano, basil, and marjoram). Just before baking, I sprinkled Parmesian cheese on top. Yum!
Thursday, January 08, 2009
The Cattle are Lowing
The second verse of “Away in a Manger” describes a pastoral scene where the animals are all gathered around baby Jesus. “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.” Now after being in Mozambique and camping next to lowing cattle, braying donkeys and bleating goats, I’m quite amazed that the baby Jesus doesn’t awake crying; but he was the baby Jesus and perhaps that was the first miracle – that he didn’t wake up crying from all the animal noises.
Our Christmas did not involve lowing cattle (thank God!) but we saw plenty of other animals of God’s creation. Christmas tends to be a lonely time for anyone who is far away from family and familiar traditions. So when we were invited to go with some friends to a nature reserve in South Africa near Kruger National Park, we jumped at the chance.
We went with six other people—a Welsh couple, a Brazilian-American couple, a Dutch woman and a Brazilian woman. We drove all the way to the park and stayed at a beautiful lodge in the reserve. The website of the lodge promised that animals would come into the yard. We were not disappointed. Christmas morning, we woke up to zebras in the yard and later that day, Joél was able to feed them. We also saw warthogs, mongoose, vervet monkeys and two jennet cats. One day we drove around the park and saw a herd of zebras grazing near 6 giraffe.
One day we went to Kruger National Park. National parks here are not like the ones we have in the States, where you can get out and hike. Here, you stay in your car and drive around, looking at wildlife. Wildlife we saw, maybe not as close as Canon sees it, but we all had our cameras and binoculars out when we saw something. We saw: impala, warthogs, waterbuck, crocodiles, water buffalo, hippos, elephants, rhinos, zebras, lions, wildebeest, baboons, vervet monkeys, eagles, a tortoise, bats, vultures and various exotic birds. It was great. At one point, we even saw a number of elephants bathing. While we were leaving the park, three male lions caused a traffic jam because they were walking from one side to the other marking their territory.
Christmas day we celebrate using parts of everyone’s traditions. We had a barbeque (Brazilian tradition) with Christmas (fruit) cake (Welsh) and pulled poppers with prizes inside (British). Joél and I had brought hymnals so we sang some carols and talked about various traditions. We also exchanges gifts amongst us.
It was a really good way to celebrate Christmas if we had to be far away from home. For those 9 days, we were family and now after we’re back in the Chimoio area, we have good memories and stronger relationships with each other.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
The second verse of “Away in a Manger” describes a pastoral scene where the animals are all gathered around baby Jesus. “The cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.” Now after being in Mozambique and camping next to lowing cattle, braying donkeys and bleating goats, I’m quite amazed that the baby Jesus doesn’t awake crying; but he was the baby Jesus and perhaps that was the first miracle – that he didn’t wake up crying from all the animal noises.
Our Christmas did not involve lowing cattle (thank God!) but we saw plenty of other animals of God’s creation. Christmas tends to be a lonely time for anyone who is far away from family and familiar traditions. So when we were invited to go with some friends to a nature reserve in South Africa near Kruger National Park, we jumped at the chance.
We went with six other people—a Welsh couple, a Brazilian-American couple, a Dutch woman and a Brazilian woman. We drove all the way to the park and stayed at a beautiful lodge in the reserve. The website of the lodge promised that animals would come into the yard. We were not disappointed. Christmas morning, we woke up to zebras in the yard and later that day, Joél was able to feed them. We also saw warthogs, mongoose, vervet monkeys and two jennet cats. One day we drove around the park and saw a herd of zebras grazing near 6 giraffe.One day we went to Kruger National Park. National parks here are not like the ones we have in the States, where you can get out and hike. Here, you stay in your car and drive around, looking at wildlife. Wildlife we saw, maybe not as close as Canon sees it, but we all had our cameras and binoculars out when we saw something. We saw: impala, warthogs, waterbuck, crocodiles, water buffalo, hippos, elephants, rhinos, zebras, lions, wildebeest, baboons, vervet monkeys, eagles, a tortoise, bats, vultures and various exotic birds. It was great. At one point, we even saw a number of elephants bathing. While we were leaving the park, three male lions caused a traffic jam because they were walking from one side to the other marking their territory.
Christmas day we celebrate using parts of everyone’s traditions. We had a barbeque (Brazilian tradition) with Christmas (fruit) cake (Welsh) and pulled poppers with prizes inside (British). Joél and I had brought hymnals so we sang some carols and talked about various traditions. We also exchanges gifts amongst us.It was a really good way to celebrate Christmas if we had to be far away from home. For those 9 days, we were family and now after we’re back in the Chimoio area, we have good memories and stronger relationships with each other.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
The Rains Keep Coming
I look at the pictures in our flicker account and am reminded that last year the Zambezi river flooded. It was only a month ago as you can see from our last blog entries that we were in a drought and people worried about planting there crops. Well, in Moz it is always feast of famine and I am well aware of this since I am so connected with local farmers. They had to plant their corn two months too late and now it is raining too much. The corn, generally speaking, is growing well because we are having really hot humid days. As we say in Nebraska, you can almost see the corn grow on these days.
The downside to all this is there is flooding. Since Mozambicans do not have good irrigation systems they have to take advantage of low-lying areas that have good humidity, especially early in the planting season and late in the rainy season and early dry season when they can still take advantage of the area for a second season of corn. During the rainy season it is quite wet below and people use it to grow cane sugar and various vegetables like tomatoes, eggplant and pumpkin which they can sell for money in the market for family needs. The soil is rich, since it is a flood plain, and very deep so they get there best production there of corn and beans and other food crops for their families. They can also plant earlier in those sites so a farmer with a lowland area in his field is much better off than others who do not. However, these places flood. And flood they did. I spoke with a farmer yesterday who lost all of his cane sugar, tomatoes and corn and beans in the lowland because of flooding. He was quite shocked how much it flooded. Well, it is a flood plain and these things happen, but for a subsistence farmer, what can you do. This means big chunk of money lost to buy school supplies, clothes and food for the family. What do you do? You just tighten your belt and hope for next year.
We cannot say that climate change is causing the erratic rainfall patterns as Mozambique has always suffered from this and I do not have data to prove this. The only thing we know is that they say that the Zambezi River normally would flood once or twice every decade. Well the last decade it has flooded 4-5 times. If it floods this year it would be the last three years making it 4 out of the last 6 years. Climate change. Then again, reading the history of southern Africa it has always been an extremely difficult place to live. The people have adapted over centuries to be able to live here. So is this weather climate change, maybe? Is it Africa, definitely!
I look at the pictures in our flicker account and am reminded that last year the Zambezi river flooded. It was only a month ago as you can see from our last blog entries that we were in a drought and people worried about planting there crops. Well, in Moz it is always feast of famine and I am well aware of this since I am so connected with local farmers. They had to plant their corn two months too late and now it is raining too much. The corn, generally speaking, is growing well because we are having really hot humid days. As we say in Nebraska, you can almost see the corn grow on these days.
The downside to all this is there is flooding. Since Mozambicans do not have good irrigation systems they have to take advantage of low-lying areas that have good humidity, especially early in the planting season and late in the rainy season and early dry season when they can still take advantage of the area for a second season of corn. During the rainy season it is quite wet below and people use it to grow cane sugar and various vegetables like tomatoes, eggplant and pumpkin which they can sell for money in the market for family needs. The soil is rich, since it is a flood plain, and very deep so they get there best production there of corn and beans and other food crops for their families. They can also plant earlier in those sites so a farmer with a lowland area in his field is much better off than others who do not. However, these places flood. And flood they did. I spoke with a farmer yesterday who lost all of his cane sugar, tomatoes and corn and beans in the lowland because of flooding. He was quite shocked how much it flooded. Well, it is a flood plain and these things happen, but for a subsistence farmer, what can you do. This means big chunk of money lost to buy school supplies, clothes and food for the family. What do you do? You just tighten your belt and hope for next year.
We cannot say that climate change is causing the erratic rainfall patterns as Mozambique has always suffered from this and I do not have data to prove this. The only thing we know is that they say that the Zambezi River normally would flood once or twice every decade. Well the last decade it has flooded 4-5 times. If it floods this year it would be the last three years making it 4 out of the last 6 years. Climate change. Then again, reading the history of southern Africa it has always been an extremely difficult place to live. The people have adapted over centuries to be able to live here. So is this weather climate change, maybe? Is it Africa, definitely!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)