It's not all sunshine and good food

So the last week in a half, the weather has been beautiful. Waking up with the sun coming up over the mountains, sunshine and cool, sea breezes. But yesterday clouds descended over the mountains. When I woke up and started my morning run, fog lined clouds covered the top of the mountains. By the end of the run, they had climbed half way down the mountains and a light mist settled over everything. It rained harder, then stopped, misted, then stopped, and on and on throughout yesterday and today. You never knew when you wished you had an umbrella or when the sun would come out and scorch everything again. I've been told that it hasn't rained for weeks, so this was much needed and warned that rainy season will have more days like today.

So what to do? Since I have yet to purchase an umbrella (but need to find one soon!), I spent a lot of today here in my little room. Reading, looking up random things on the computer instead of working and watching tv. Then I thought, hey I'll experiment with some cooking. See, almost every cut of chicken and beef I've seen at the store has bones in it, and bones kinda creep me out, so I haven't tried cooking anything but pasta yet. I opted to buy some fish, leaving bones for another day, and try my hand at that. Under the advice of the wonderful Sara Storti, I dipped it in eggs and flour and pan fried it in butter with some lemon pepper seasoning. Sounds fancy huh? Well fish is kinda smelly I think, and not very appealing to the eye and at one point in time I thought I would have to abandon the project and opt for a PB&J. But I prevailed and kept cooking. I also cooked some fresh green beans and made some rice.


This might not seem like a big deal to you, but for me to prepare a whole meal like this, with no outside help (besides Sara via Skype) is pretty impressive. Unfortunately I didn't realize rice took twice as long as fish and ended up having to microwave my meal so everything was hot at the same time. This occurred, of course, after I realized that the burner the rice is on doesn't work all that well and after I dropped a piece of fish in the sink while trying to transport it to a plate.


But here it is, my lovely meal. Fish and white rice...not all that flavorful, next time I'll put on some more spices. The green beans were really good though!


I topped off my night of experiments with a new type of fruit which I can barely say correctly...pommecythere. They aren't quite ripe though, so I think I'll wait another day or two to try the others. But here they make chow...you put the fruit in a little water with salt and pepper (and maybe other spices) and let it marinate a bit. It was pretty good, I'll try it again when they are ripe!

Hopefully tomorrow will be sunny again or at least maybe I can make something with a bit more umph!