Brown rice takes too long to cook. So I decided to eat my dessert first. The plus side to this is that after I eat dinner I can eat another dessert if I so choose. The cats are fat and happy so won’t tell. In fact, if they got even 1/3 of the exercise I did, I would allow them even more treats then they get. I am down to my post breast-cancer, pre-hysterectomy wait, which is nice because it requires me to schlepp less sweaty body around in the heat. And if I had that bikini I bought in Rio back in 2007, I still wouldn’t wear it, but I COULD, if I wanted to, and that’s what matters.
Last night I made a nice salad and tried my hand at flour tortillas again. I was too lazy to really roll them out; I thought I could just kind of flatten them on a plate and shape them with my hands. Not true, as it turned out, but the cool thing is if you are making them for bread and not to actually wrap something in, they still turn out fine.
While the dough was resting, I decided to try another no bake cookies recipe from our Peace Corps cookbook. Have I mentioned that I have no oven? I have a gas cooking range, but no oven. I decided that in the interest of not baking myself every bread, cake and cookie recipe in this book, I would just survive without one. But you can make a lot of bread type and dessert type things without a stove, I have discovered.
So this time it was peanut butter fudge. Peanut butter, corn syrup (I used some honey instead), warm water, milk powder, confectioner’s sugar. I added some cocoa cause the word “fudge” in my mind equates with chocolate. So do the words “boredom,” “anxiety,” “loneliness,” “my electricity is out again,” “I don’t feel like doing my work,” etc., etc. All words, like all roads, lead to chocolate. Thanks Mom.
I thought for about 2 seconds about making a ½ recipe. I did that with the tortillas so I would only have to eat six of them instead of 12. But the fudge recipe said serves 4 to 6 so I wasn’t sure how many fudge balls that would actually make. 12, it turns out, which means 2 to 3 balls per person by their reckoning . Get real. And they were mighty nice. The next morning when I looked in the fridge, I was surprised to discover I had only eaten 4 of them. So I guess the recipe really serves 3. I could have sworn I ate more. But heh, far out, breakfast!
The other thing I discovered when I woke up was what I have now semi-affectionately dubbed “Lazy Butt Ants.” (LBA) They were at the water trough that is my sink with the unwashed tortilla frying pan in it. They aren’t really the lazy butts, I was. The two times I have gone to bed without doing all my dishes completely, leaving water in something (it’s the famous Kraft Family Overnight Soak, which my brothers practiced with great proficiency when we were young. They were supposed to come back and clean it in the morning, but by then it was someone else’s turn to clean the kitchen, and they became totally oblivious to their forgetfulness) , I have woken to these Lazy Butt Ants. My, that was a great run on of a sentence. My inner editor notices, but cares not. I even just noticed how I could fix it. Still don’t care.
Anyway, ants in the sink, under the dish rack, crawling up the walls to the ledge near the ceiling which as far as I can tell is just a place for bugs to hide, but serves no structural or even esthetic purpose. It is the launching pad from which bugs and other creatures introduce themselves into my kitchen; sometimes falling to their deaths while I am gone and leaving carcasses that I am left to ponder; other times just peeking out at me, like the salamander tonight; or literally hanging out, like the long-legged spiders that I leave alone as long as they hang high.
Pudi saw the salamander tonight, but again, even her jump can’t do the 10 feet distance. I think the salamander also saw Pudi. It certainly saw me and ran right back into the crack in the corner that appears to be designed specifically for his/her quick entrances and exits. So now, I ask, why don’t lizards eat ants, especially Lazy Butt Ants? My home would be the perfect little ecosystem if it were so, but apparently he/she is blowing them off. And as I sit once again readying myself for another candlelight dinner, I have discovered that these LBAs, at least the ones I haven’t killed, appear to be able to fly. A couple have already landed on my computer screen. Lovely.
Tomorrow is Independence Day here in Botswana – the country is 45 years old. I may have to put out some ant poison. We are never totally free, no matter what they say, as long as LBAs can fly.
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