Acorns...A Childhood Dream

When I was a youngun', I read My Side of the Mountain and thought, "Man-o-man...one day I want to hollow out my own tree in the woods, cure me some deer skin, and fill my food stores with acorns so that I can too enjoy acorn flour pancakes." I read and reread that book, scheming and planning, memorizing the technique for acorn collection and storage because you never know when you might need to know how to deal with acorns.

Well low and behold, that day has come and acorn collection time is upon us.

My rationale for what you will soon see was a foolish endeavor was that going from this

To these fine products was as simple as

Pick and dry...and we have dried apples!

Pick and boil...and we have apple syrup!

And so off we headed into the world of acorn processing. 

Damn those apocalyptic, end of world blogger types who swear up and down that acorns are well worth the time it takes to process squirrel fodder. And damn them again for claiming that six changes of water will take your acorns from bitter, inedible nuggets of nastiness to healthy, delicious, satisfying treats. It has been six weeks and we still aren't there. 

Once again, the thing that rankles me is the blogosphere, where folks claim that this acorn processing stuff rocks. Really? I just have to set the record straight, dammit. 

So here is what you get if you decide that you need to play with acorns.

First you have to pick them up which, if you have middle schoolers, is potentially embarrassing. Thus, I recommend the first step in this process very highly. There are any number of different kinds of oak trees and even, so they say, a sweet oak that drops acorns that need hardly any processing but I think that might be a load of kaka. 

The next step. getting the acorns out of their shells part, also ranked pretty high on the fun-stuff-to-do-when-you-have-no-money scale. It got high marks because you get to smash stuff with hammers. Next, though, comes the poopy water stage.

Yup, that muck comes out of acorns (and yes, there are acorns in there, under the muck) through a process called leeching, which involves lots of boiling water and baking soda. Is it any wonder our forefathers decided pretty quickly that importing flour from Europe was the way to go? 

You get about six weeks of poopy water before the acorns stop being so full of tannin that they constipate you and their bitterness curls your toes. Then the water looks like this instead:

 Many hours of drying in the dehydrator and they start to look like mouse turds.

And they then can be thrown in a jar and placed in the cupboard until the trauma of having undergone this experience begins to fade.

I think the next thing you are supposed to do is grind them into a sort of acorn meal and make things out of them--like bread, noodles, and coffee (and My Side of the Mountain pancakes). Really! However, the same idiots who swore that this whole process would take days are also the ones who posted recipes for all that stuff so we have yet to eat these shriveled, blackened nuggets.

Anyone in the market for some acorns?

What You Don't See...

Many downsides of moving exist and, having grown up a product of the US military, I know them all. But there are also downsides of staying in a place for too long. Chief among them is that you forget to see.

If we had lived here in Sweet Little Town, USA, for forever, we would forget to notice that the leaves went from green to stunning scarlet almost overnight last month. We might even fail to see that our house is freezing cold all the time. Or that we can never dress in fewer than six layers these days.

But I digress (because I am freezing cold and even my brain feels numb).

This week has been the most amazing week ever because this week it snowed. And because we are suddenly living in a manner that includes very little structured anything aside from the multiple hours that The Man requires we spend everyday getting smart at the local school house, we had lots of time to go out and see the snow.

We were stunned. Snowflakes have shape! Snowflakes are cold! Snowflakes get stuck in cobwebs and on mittens and sit there staring back at you, definite in their shape. Snowflakes are, in short, quite astonishing and worthy of constant comments.

A snowy miracle

Yes, that's snow on the roof of the car. We
were
nearly wetting ourselves.

Also of note was the amount of snow that fell without anyone else in this town taking much notice. I mean, there was a WHOLE DUSTING OF SNOW! And some of us were outside running around in it with photo-taking equipment because, well, it's SNOW!









Some of us (anonymity is important in this blog, but only when I cannot remember which child says what) wanted to go sledding in the pathetic dusting of snow that fell during the afternoon and early evening hours. However, when the physics of sleds was explained, that plan was quickly abandoned in favor of snowman making.

And I shall call him Bob...

To lend a bit of perspective, that is a mini carrot for a nose, and balled up next to Bob there is a black glove, child's size extra small. Bob is, shall we say, petite.

It is still snowing out as I type, but none of it is sticking too much. Bob lays slumped on the front porch and a squirrel made off with his nose at some point during the morning. However, we are seeing snow as I have never seen it before because, well, it's like I have never seen it before.

Snow is cool (okay, that's bad, I know).

How to Eat on $65 a Week (and Not Develop Scurvy)

I keep running across all of these "how to save a bazillion bucks" blogs these days. 

We have a love-hate relationship. 

The blog's author always posts a picture of herself in a sidebar looking like the all-American girl. Their peaches and cream complexions are probably because, with all of the wholesome recipes and money saving tips they offer, they can go to the spa each morning, leaving the kids with nannies. And they can then hit the gym before lunch. I hate them all. 

happymoneysaver.com...this woman gave us our recipe
for homemade laundry soap at $.02 a load. And she
manages to look stunning while doing it. Damn her.

keephomesimple.blogspot.com...I love this woman's
one-hour French bread recipe. She raises kids, cooks
wholesome meals, and looks like June Cleaver. Every day.

fivehearthome.com...thanks to this woman we have
healthy, no-cook granola bars until the kids find them and eat
them all (their new record--three hours). In case you haven't
figured it out yet, her name is Samantha. Her life is perfect.

Their houses always abound with love. They describe their kids as "sweet, loving, energetic, beautiful," and their past-times usually include reading something (like home-making magazines, but never smutty novels), baking, church, and servicing her husband who is, invariably, her soul mate. *Retch*

And yet, for all of my animosity, I need to thank these blogging ladies because they are the reason we are not eating oatmeal every night for dinner. And they are also the reason, in part, that our grocery bill is so low.  They just have so many darn good ideas on saving a buck. Gotta pay for those facials somehow.

I was talking to my sister this week and she was so impressed at how cheaply we are eating but then, when I explained how we are eating so cheaply, she was repulsed which, of course, means that these tips must be blog-worthy.

How to Eat on $65 a Week (and not develop scurvy)

1. Eat cabbage...lots of cabbage.

. 

Cabbage is frickin' cheap. And you can turn it into cabbage soup, cabbage rolls, cabbage salad, cabbage fritters, cabbage meatballs, cabbage curry. The downside is that it is hard to disguise as anything but cabbage. 

The bite out of our budget: 85 cents apiece. 

Meal value: 3-5 meals can be squeezed from a single cabbage. 

Complaint level: 8/10 due to its gaseous qualities.

2. Use TVP as a filler anytime you serve ground meat.

I know, it looks like breakfast cereal...or cat vomit...depending on your age and level of tact. But it is in fact some kind of dried stuff that, when you add it to meat, makes your food budget go a long way. Like little dried flakes of magic. 

The bite out of our budget: Infinitesimal

Meal value: Seemingly infinite

Complaint level: 0/10 if they don't see it going into their food, 10/10 if they do. TVP gets an 11/10 if they fail to make the cat vomit connection.

3. Sop off the government.

I know, I know...the dole is naughty. But my kids eat a lot. So T and I sat down and calculated that we could save approximately $100 a week if we would just sign them up for government lunch at school. So we did. 

The bite out of our budget: There is free lunch. Thank you US taxpayers.

Meal value: 15/week

Complaint level: 0/10. They like free lunch because it guarantees pizza once a week. We will deal with the resulting obesity later.

4. Sop off the neighbors...then make stuff.

Man, everyone here has fruit trees that they don't pick. Right now, it is don't-pick-your-apples season with a few hangers-on from don't-pick-your-pears season. It looks like we will soon be heading into don't-pick-your-crab-apples season.

The fruits of our latest sopping.

Apple jelly made from the neighbor's apples

The bite out of our budget: Thanks to child labor, nada.

Meal value: 5/week...there's apple fritters, apple jam, apple sauce, apple pie, apple crisp, apple cake, apple slices for snack... 

Complaint level: 1/10. No one complains about dessert, but there have been some complaints about the occasional worm and the rot level encountered when picking. It will come out later in counselling.

5. Shop at Aldi and eschew organics

Not as good as Walmart for entertainment value, but
darn cheap so long as you keep your expectations low.

I know, you're going to say that we are probably setting ourselves up for chronic diseases later while simultaneously destroying the planet, but buying conventional saves in the short run, and right now we are all about the short run. On top of that, Aldi, according to a number of hardcore, money saving bloggers, is nothing less than the devil's work. 

But Aldi has my heart because, if you are not overly picky about labels, the mountains of pre-packaged foodstuffs that you have to navigate around to find the bargains, and the fact that you have to USE YOUR OWN BAGS **gasp** it is cheap.

Signing off from the world of "ain't got no money"...

Povertingly yours,

Rachel

Soccer Chicas

Last month, just before leaving Oman, I witnessed a group of girls discussing a bizarre phenomenon. It was odd really and the girls could not get their heads around it. They had observed that all of the non-Omani women they had met that summer were good at sports. The Omani women, in contrast, with the exception of a tiny handful, were just awful at anything having to do with a racket, a ball, or a bat of some sort. Even moving faster than a slow stroll was too much to ask for some. The girls were puzzled.

As they sat and conversed about how strange this was and pondered how this could be, they asked one another, “What strange forces are at work?” (Okay, they didn’t say exactly that, but you get the idea).

“I have heard,” one of the girls suggested, “That Omani women are just more delicate.”

All of the girls nodded their heads. “It is the heat,” another replied.

And then they all sat and nodded their heads some more. End of conversation. Yes. It is the heat and the delicacy of that nationality. That was their end conclusion.

I watched them and was also completely flabbergasted. But I was thinking about how strange this conversation was and, further, that they had drawn upon this conclusion so automatically and without any sort of apparent demonstration of critical thought upon the matter.

In spite of images like this--

Thanks to www.sail-world.com for the image of the
Oman Sails All Women Team at work.

And this from the 2014 Olympics

Shinoonah Salah Al Habsi (in the middle) in the Summer Olympics, rockin'
the Daily Mail. I hope Reuters doesn't mind that I borrowed the image.

And the others you get to see if you do a search on "Omani women sport image", the girls (or at least the ones I talked to) don't see themselves as people who need to be or even can be physically active.

Fast forward a month and here I am in the good ol' US of A. Tian must have been feeling lonely for some mom time as now I see her for all of two hours each day. She invited me to come to one of her soccer games. Wow. I must be the coolest mom in the world if my teenager wants me to come watch her do anything.

Because I was totally flattered to be invited to a middle school sporting event and because I am only minimally employed (okay, I am pretty much totally unemployed), I said that I would come and watch her team play. 

It was amazing.

This is what girls look like in America when they grow up with the expectation that they will move their bodies.

Look! There is Tian at the end of the bench! Go Tian!

They end up taking it for granted that they are supposed to move their bodies, and they just do it. They play like little soccer demons every day of the week and go to bed wondering what they will do with themselves after soccer season is over at the end of September because they love playing the sport so much. And then they hear that there is an indoor winter soccer league and subsequently quit whining at their mothers all the time.

After my month-ago-conversation, I am eternally grateful for the belief that girls can and should play sports here.

And so is Tehva.

Perhaps You Are Gobsmacked...Or Perhaps You Saw This Coming

We are back in the USA and things are going well for all of us. But one of us is confused.

If you had to choose one of these two to be confused, which would you choose?
I know, it's a tough call. 

If you guessed Tehva, then you win the million dollar prize. As if I had a million dollars. Let's not go there.

Tehva is in a constant state of confusion but the girl is doing her darndest to catch up with everyone around her. Her greatest struggle seems to be that she lacks a common language with her classmates and with the schooling institution in general.

Period or Full Stop?

“Mom…every time my teacher says, ‘Period’ I just crack up.”

“Does she say it a lot?”

“All the time! It’s so funny!”

I appreciate that this particular visual is bilingual.
Tehva would appreciate that, too, if she could
stop laughing about the period thing.

In Tehva’s mind the woman is menstruating excessively, but I am sure that in Mrs. H’s mind, nothing of the sort is transpiring. “What would you have her say instead?”

“I don’t know. Not that.”

Tian, who is decidedly and very intentionally NOT having any communication issues with ANYONE in this tiny hamlet breaks in to lay down the law. “Tehva, you can’t think of it as a full stop anymore. It is a period.”

“I like full stop. And period sounds dumb. It sounds like someone is bleeding.”

“Well they’re not. So get over it. Speak American.”

We are trying hard to get Tehva to simply understand that speaking American and, well, speaking hybrid-been-overseas-in-a-British-dominant-expat-culture-for-my-early-formative-language-years-English are two different things. It is rough going, though.

Dress like this...

What Are the USA's Colors Again?

To make things even harder, yesterday was Patriot Day, meaning the kids were asked to wear red, white and blue to school in memory of 9/11, but I am not sure that anyone actually said that in Tehva's class. It might have been implicitly understood by everyone. Except for Tehva. 

Tehva came downstairs wearing yellow, black and orange. “Where is your red, white and blue? You look like you are dressed for Patriot Day in…maybe…Germany?” (is there a country whose national colors and yellow, black and orange?)

“Huh?”

“It’s Patriot Day. Red, white and blue.”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.”

Football or Football?

“Mom, one of my teachers is selling tickets for something. Can we go?”

“What is the event?”

“Ummm, they keep saying it is football. But I think it is something else. Is it soccer?”

Silas, who is also, aside from the fact that he uses vocabulary better suited to a college professor and adamantly insisting that he does not follow sports, fitting in quite nicely here, breaks in to clarify things. “No, Tehva, it is called football but it is the one with the funny ball. American football. No one here would buy tickets to soccer.”

“Oh, you mean the one with the ball that kind of looks like a rugby ball?”

Tian then entertains everyone with a tale of watching boys run up and down the field with their football pads bouncing around their ears because the boys are so short. Everyone laughs, but I can see Tehva thinking, “Does this have anything to do with a period?”

What Ramadan Is Good For...

Most people know that Ramadan is the Muslim Holy Month, but there is a whole culture around Ramadan that makes the holiday feel unique if you are Muslim. And if you are not Muslim, it's a sigh of relief.

Being here during Ramadan has been a little bit sad since we are not really invited to participate in the celebrations going on around us. Frankly, it's a bit like the next-door-neighbor's birthday party you didn't get invited to.

But in spite of feeling all woe-is-me, there are some ways that Ramadan can be enjoyed if you aren't in on the good times but are bearing witness to the good times.

What is Ramadan good for if you are not Muslim but living in a Muslim country?

1.) Ramadan is a good time to go to the dentist.

What with the fast on, no one wants to go to the dentist and have work done, only to swallow a bit of water during the procedure and have to make up that day's fast later.

Two days ago I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned before we return to The Land of the Free, The Home of the Brave, The Place of the Ridiculously Expensive Medical and Dental Procedure. I waited a grand total of 38 seconds to be seen.

Incidentally, the political enemies of the USA, the Russians and Cubans who man the dental clinic, were lovely, patient, and kind, and charged me $12 for my cleaning, Tian's extraction,  a round of painkillers and Tony's filling.

God bless the Communists.

2.) Ramadan is a good time to learn to drive.

Ramadan = no traffic = no one to plow into = best time to learn to drive.

When we non-Muslims are commuting to work, our Muslim neighbors and co-workers are still sleeping off the morning's suhoor (see my earlier post about exactly how this eating thing works at Ramadan).

For those doing the math, that means zero traffic.

On the flip side of the day, 7 p.m. is the other best time to practice driving because Oman is experiencing a collective fast breaking.

Frankly, driving between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m. or between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. is like driving through the zombie apocalypse as the roads are so deserted, and who doesn't love zombies?

3.) Ramadan is a good time to save money.
\
That coffee and snack that Tony usually buys in the mornings, thus draining the monthly slush fund of, well, slush, is fat and happy right now because there is no coffee available in the mornings unless it comes from our home supply of coffee. And those snacks? They will once again be available after 28 July. There are no restaurants open for lunch (except the American Club but shhhhhhh...that's a secret), no Starbucks selling tasty, overpriced beverages, no little cafes with little cafe treats. We are living in a diurnal food wasteland and that, my friends, is like getting a little bit of free money each and every day.

4.) Ramadan is a good time to master the art of eating on the sly while in the car.
I didn't realize how many breakfasts on the road we were doing until Ramadan hit and we suddenly were being discouraged from overtly carrying food outside our house--getting up earlier and eating breakfast at home was out of the question.  The only realistic solution to this problem, then, was to learn how to eat in the car without looking like you are eating. I recommend moving to a Muslim country so that you, too, can learn how to eat in the car without appearing to eat.

5.) Ramadan is a good time to be a lazy bum at work.
Nobody is working too hard during Ramadan because everyone is conserving energy. This is contagious. If you have ever fantasized about a three-hour workday punctuated by long stretches of putting your feet up or chatting with the person at the next desk, then working during Ramadan is for you.

6.) Ramadan is a good time to get free chocolates.
I had a big fat box of nice chocolates waiting for me on my desk yesterday. The Ramadan Fairy left them. They were better than Russell Stover. Can you imagine? Ow, I think my tongue just impaled my cheek.

And that is what rocks when it comes to Ramadan.

Date me, Baby...It's Fast Breaking Time

The weirdest potluck that I have ever been to started like this:

We all gathered in a gigantic circle of the grassy lawn in front of the host’s home, cradling our dishes that we had brought. Then the introductions began, innocently enough at first:

“Hi, my name is Raven.”

“Hi, Raven.” (Yes, it felt a bit AA, but in fact it was just New England hippy).

\

“To share with all of you tonight, I have brought a potato salad.”

Oh, that’s nice, I thought. I’d never been to a potluck where we identified our food before people started to eat it but it was New England. Here’s where it gets weird. “My salad contains potatoes, so if you’re allergic, don’t eat it. Oh, and it has mayonnaise which is soy-based, so if you have an intolerance, don’t eat it. And I put onions in it. And salt.”

My thought: people have potato allergies? And who DOESN'T know that potato salad has potatoes in it?

At Southern pot lucks we always just plunk our dishes on the long table with the crepe-papery covering in the social hall and maintain a quiet vigilance over whatever we’ve brought. It’s a matter of church lady pride to see your mac-n-burger casserole go first and then hear the Preacher call out, “Now who brought that mac-n-burger? That was delicious!” The anonymity is a sacred Southern ritual within the potluck itself.

But back to New England and on to the next person in the circle. “Hi, my name is Ocean Leaf Lovesalot.”

“Hi, Ocean Leaf Lovesalot.”

“I brought a roast chicken that I raised myself on organic, vegetarian feed, but if you are vegetarian, you should not eat it. I seasoned it with salt and pepper and garlic.”

From the crowd comes, “Now, Ocean Leaf, did you use ethically raised garlic this time?”

“Oh…oh…I’m sorry. The co-op was out. It's conventionally raised...”

"Oh darn. No chicken for me tonight."

And on we went around the circle with each person warning us of gluten, dairy, soy, sugar, seeds, garlic, spice, gelatin, honey, nuts, and non-vegetarian-compliant foods. I was half starved by the time we were allowed to eat, so I ate a bit of everything, but not before others went through the line, discussing their limitations as they went.

“I’m not eating gluten now. I really feel like I have so much more energy these days.”

“Oh, yes, I also am gluten free. And I have read about soy and its hormone level link so I have cut out soy. My moods feel so much more stable.”

It was something akin to miraculous that this gathering had gotten off the ground at all because how do you throw a New England hippy party for a largely vegetarian crowd with a high incidence of Celiac’s disease that will not eat anything processed or containing sugar or dairy? Or that is unethically raised?

This all comes to mind because it is Ramadan. As I write this, we have just finished up the second week and are into the third. While I thought in the first week about getting arrested, in the second week I have thought a lot about food because, in spite of Ramadan being a fasting period, this month is still very much about food. But it is about what we eat, but it is also about when we eat and how.

Ramadan’s fast exists in part to encourage patience, purity and modesty. It also serves to heighten people’s awareness of the plight of the poor. By forgoing food and water from sun up to sun down, the feeling of desperate wondering about the timing of one’s next meal should trigger a feeling of empathy for those who go without every day. In that way, people will give more freely to charity in order to support those less fortunate while developing patience, purity, modesty, and a closer connection to God.

At least that’s what Nasser told me.

And yes, I have seen people giving to the poor in the streets, as well as free meals distributed in the evenings by mosques throughout Muscat, so it does work. But more interesting to me has been to watch how people eat at Ramadan.

Iftar, the evening meal that breaks your day’s fast, begins at 7:03 p.m. but in actuality, even if you are eating your iftar at a restaurant, it starts earlier. We attended iftar recently and found that it involved a lot of staring at plates of food between 6:40 and 7:03 p.m. Everyone arrived at the restaurant a good 30 minutes before the maghrib prayer call sounded in order to secure a table. A miniature table off to the side was loaded with dates, yoghurt drinks, juices, water, and fried tidbits like eggrolls and samosa.

Everyone took a small plate of these things and placed it at their seats. Then they all went back and loaded up plates of dinnery foods so as to be ready when the maghrib went—chicken, rice, mutton, dal and salads all featured heavily at all three iftars we attended. And nobody said anything about allergies or ethics. Imagine.

 After all drinks were arranged neatly and the dates were in the optimal position, everyone commenced with the sitting and staring portion of the evening, except for Tehva and the other under 10s. They all quietly snitched little pinches of food and sipped from the tops of their cups while asking frequently about the time.

And then the moment of release—the prayer call. With the first Allah akbar, everyone silently picked up a date and broke their fast. After a slug of yoghurt drink and an egg roll or two, many men got up to go pray, and then returned to the table to join their families in seriously breaking the fast, shoveling in the chow as quickly as possible in order to go back for more. And, for some, this was followed by more. And more. And more. And all the while, the eating was accompanied by happy chitchat and some serious gustatory appreciation.

The iftar lasts as long as people care to eat and then the good times begin, lasting until the pre-dawn meal, the suhoor, which is hearty and meant to carry you through the day until your next iftar.   

In this context, the dietary restrictions of that potluck of yore seem vapid and superficial. At Ramadan, everyone is so happy to break the fast and so prayerful as they proceed through the process of fast breaking that you can’t help but pick up a date and joyfully join in. To speak up at the serving table and question whether something has garlic or gluten or dairy would be to break the spirit of iftar. The whole idea, I think, is to have an enlarged sense of God’s bounty and the patience to wait to enjoy it.

And that is something to take to your next hippy potluck--a big dish of potato salad, a part of God's bounty, made with immense patience, and sprinkled with gratefulness and happiness just to be eating.