Because he’s back home from secondary school for the holiday, Simon is in charge of the kitchen at the Bethlehem School this month. Although only seventeen, he's easily one of the best cooks whose food I've ever eaten. “In Uganda, it’s considered a disgrace for a man to cook unless he trains to be a chef,” he tells me ( Read more... )

One of the best ways to see how the locals live, I’ve found, is to visit the market. Alas, on such a trip, words fail me-mostly because I don’t always know what I’m looking at and a language barrier prevents a lot of question-asking. So I’ll let some pictures do the talking this time:

Read on, Macduff, at Scholars & Rogues.

I undertook my first adventure into pie-making this morning: Thanksgiving pumpkin pie! I wasn't brave enough to try and make my own pie crust, but I did tackle the filling. A FB friend suggested I crank up some groovy tunes to bake to, but I opted to bake in silence. I wanted to enjoy the experience, to be in the moment and focus on it for what it ( Read more... )

I just saw back-to-back commercials for Kaye Jewelers and Hershey Kisses. The Kaye's ad ended with their slogan, "Every Kiss begins with 'K.'" And then voila! there were Hershey kisses! But the best irony is that the Hershey ad ended with a slogan that something along the lines of a "one-of-a-kind kiss" inside every wrapper. So every kiss is the ( Read more... )

As the griddle began to heat up, it made a single loud crack. Then it sat silent for a couple minutes as I mixed my batter, then it cracked again ( Read more... )

When I went to China the first time, I gave up Diet Mt. Dew. I have, on occasion, fallen off the wagon since then and gone through Dew-drinking phases-mostly at times when I needed more hours in the day and had to find them through massive amounts of caffeine. In most instances, coffee does it for me. It doesn't jack me up the way Diet Dew does, so ( Read more... )

I watched an incredible amount of football this weekend, which is not the norm for me. Managed to do some reading. Managed to do some writing. Managed to do some "office work" kind of stuff ( Read more... )