The Mad Stirfry List

I love making a mad stirfry.  Here is the ultimate list, to be perfected over time:

For the sauce:

• soy sauce or a substitute
• white pepper
• honey
• lime juice
• water
• curry powder
• black pepper
• chile Coban
• Maya-Ik hot sauce
• other form of picante
• chicken or beef stock/bullion/consomme

Proteinacious material:

• tofu
• thinly sliced beef, chicken, pork, squirrel, whatever.  Bits of some mammal or bird.
• a coupla eggs

Once the wok is warm:

• garlic
• ginger

Vegetable matter:

• broccoli
• carrot
• green beans
• red or green bell pepper
• green onion/shallots
• water chestnuts 
• baby corn or corn off the cob

Fungi:

• button mushrooms (or whatever they call them these days.  Criminies?)
• sliced up portobellos

Extras:

• walnuts
• cashews
• pine nuts
• bean sprouts

 **Fruitz:

• pineapple slices
• apple bits

Things I haven't tried but sound like they might be good:

• dandelion greens
• fiddleheads
• guisquil
• beets
• sweet shelled peas (I tried mature shelled peas... mistake.)
• fennel
• snow peas
• wild mushrooms
• a dash of coconut milk, or bits of coconut
• artichoke hearts

 To be served beside/upon:

• white rice
• brown rice
• Thai rice noodles
• mung bean noodles
• **spaghetti squash spaghetti
• your face

* Shellfish are not included in this list because I might die if I eat them. 
** Disclaimer: these items have also not yet been attempted.

Tree of... I forget what.

I've been asked twice by kids I've gone to school with over the age of fourteen what language is spoken in England.

I've had arguments with people over whether or not hens without the company of a rooster will produce eggs containing a chicken embryo.

Now I am coming to the realization that not everybody understands the relationship between a flower and a fruit. 

I don't know if someone directly told me how things worked when I was little, or if I just payed attention.

With the second two, it bugs me the most when I talk to people who like to think of themselves as "connected with nature", but don't get those two pretty simple ideas.  Like it's never occurred to them.

I'm thinking it's probably not their fault, just the crazy state of things.

And it makes me wonder, even if I understand some of these things, people miss so much.  What am I missing?  What has no one told me?  What have I not noticed?

Back in Business

People who blog every day or every week or every time something exciting happens make me feel guilty about how unreliably I post.  Fortunately I think the number of people who read my blog even at peak production is negligible and any guilt I feel actually stems from a sinful pride of how awesome my life regularly is.

Not to say I haven't had embarrassing moments, awkward moments, moments of frustration and depression.  I've had 'em.  But the "everything else" makes up for it 176 cents on the dollar, at least.  Oftentimes more.  I'm doing good.  And, for now, I'm back in business. 

Since the collision with the sea turtle way back in November, stuff has happened.  Anyone who knows me well enough to read my blog I think also knows what I've been up to since, but just for, like, posterity:

My family came down to Guatemala to visit me in December.  We did stuff.

After they left, I moved off the beach and returned to the mountains, to Ciudad Vieja, near Antigua.

I moved in with a roommate into a real house and started doing volunteer work at Valhalla Experimental Station, a macadamia nut farm.  It's awesome.  I do stuff.  Like paint and garden and pick up nuts.

I took up cooking again, since I have a kitchen, and have since made some favorites: mad stir fries and a lovely roast chicken, as well as sapote bread.  

In March a friend from up North, Canada, came to hang out in Guatemala with me.  Plans were scattered all over the place, but we did manage to visit Hannah in Xela for a week and get a school house painted back at the beach.

I got giardia!  And got rid of it.

I got a job working at a bar and restaurant in Antigua!  I have zero experience and the learning curve is intense.  But, I think, worth it.  I'm making about ninety cents an hour.  :D

I still work at the macadamia farm, too.