And Then There Was Cobbler: An Ode to My Father.

Day 11:

This morning was rough.  My kids woke up earlier than usual, and after being so active yesterday and worn out I didn't even sleep well last night, and the terrible air quality continues to take its toll on all of us Tomlinsons.  I reluctantly got up, got the kids breakfast, bathed them and got them dressed.  By the time we were all ready for the day, I was feeling worse and ended up going back to bed.  I kept the kids in the bedroom with me so they wouldn't disturb Doug's language session, but man, my throat is killing me.  Doug and Kees both have a pretty yucky cough too.  So we are all having to take it a little easy and TRY to stay indoors out of the air, which is NOT easy.  For some reason, as soon as I have to stay in, all I want to do is be outdoors.

So while I was dying in bed, Doug was watching the kids. Eventually, I woke up out of my blackened smog haze of death stupor, and I was hungry, but crazy thirsty too.  I texted Doug, because that's what we do, and he was going to go grab some stuff for me and bring back coconut water, but I kept thinking of more and more things I wanted and decided to just go myself.  I wasn't feeling the best, but moms don't really get sick days.  I put Kora down for a nap and then took Kees with me to run all my errands.  He doesn't ever want to be separated from Kora, but I convinced him. The best way I've found is to emphasize that I really don't want to go alone and I need his help. It worked like a charm.  But when he was still not wanting to go he said, "You can just go mom, and when you get back I will snuggle you, okay?"  (Can I just keep him little, pretty please???)

Okay, when I go out I have to plan my shopping around which side of the street stuff is on to avoid making any right hand turns.  We drive on the left side of the road here so I try to make a circle where I am always turning left and never right, except back into my neighborhood.  The first place we went was to Royal Project.  It's a small shop about 5-10 minutes drive away from our house.  They sell mainly produce and it's a government subsidized program for farmers to grow things organically and pesticide free and all that good jazz. The real reasons I go there are: 1)It's small. 2)It's air conditioned. 3) I can't buy too many non-list items because there's not a lot of distracting non-necessity type items.  And I should clarify, that when I make a list for Royal Project it usually reads something like: 2 dark green veggies, pumpkin, a fruit, etc Because their inventory fluctuates depending on the season.  Today I bought Chinese kale, broccoli, zucchini, a Japanese pumpkin, potatoes, mulberries, and peaches.  The peaches were quite a surprise, I've never eaten a peach in Thailand! All that was about $7.

At Royal Project, Kees is holding zucchini, and the peaches are in the bottom left corner of that same picture.

Then we went across the street to Tesco Lotus express to get eggs.  Lotus is like Europe's version of Walmart, but this one is an Express market so it just has a few things.  When I went in, I remembered a few things we were running low on and saw that they had salsa ingredients on sale.  SCORE!  My friend Alicia (pronounced Uh-LISH-Uh) usually comes over every Sunday night and we have chicken nachos with my hoarded cheese.  She was sick this last Sunday, so we re-scheduled for tonight! Perfect!  I got peppers, tomatoes, cilantro, eggs, ramen type noodles, and vegetable oil.  My total there was around $4.30.

Tesco Lotus

On the way home we stopped to buy coconut water and at a fruit stand to pick up watermelon and pineapple.  The coconut water was $2 for 6 bags and the fruit was $1 for 3 bags.  So my total for the outing was under $15.  Not too shabby!

We usually don't get out of the truck when we by coconut water, but this time we were getting fruit at a nearby stand, so I let Kees pay for our stuff.  He's a little shy, but he was brave.

My $14.30 worth of groceries.  The tomatoes were on sale for approximately 12 cents!

The way of shopping in Thailand is different.  In America the selection seems like a lot more and often we start with a recipe or a list and work from that.  In Thailand, often times it's the opposite.  When Thai people go shopping they find crazy good deals and then use whatever they found to make a meal.  I think I've adopted a lot of the Thai way, but definitely still have American aspects about the way I shop.  We're always talking about how we are growing and changing in order to be a blessing here and part of that is throwing out a lot of our own ideas and things we were used to.  If we came over here and refused to change or adapt, we wouldn't be very effective.  Sometimes change is so hard, especially for us mommas who like to have things planned and perfect, like ALL the time.  But really and truly, no matter where you live, life just isn't like that!  So we have to be conformed, we have to adapt and change to be more like Christ.  No matter what you do, if you do it with love and compassion, people will see that, and your life and work will be relevant.  (That was my good word...kind of randomly thrown in there)

Okay, so we got home and since I chugged some coconut water and used my new baby (the kitchen aid) to start some bread, I decided to take the kids over to the school room because we kept talking about changing our calendar over for April, but hadn't ever done it.  Kees is good at reminding me.  So we finally changed our calendar and the kids helped make some new art for "spring".

That's the only number Kora was allowed to put on, she almost destroyed it.  Surprised?  You shouldn't be.

Crayons!  Kora tried to eat them, shocker, and she kept dropping them off the table, so we moved to the floor. Which didn't prevent her from trying to eat them, but she did stop dropping them.

When dinner time rolled around, we had the fabulous chicken nachos, with homemade salsa...amazing.

Okay, I realize neither of these look that appetizing, but I promise you they were.

Oh and P.S. the bread I made in the kitchen aid did something weird.  I should have known that I could not be trusted with the kind of amazing power a kitchenaid possesses. I followed the recipe, to make the bread I've made tons of times.  The dough seemed too liquidy, but I thought maybe that's what it was supposed to be like and it just never was because I didn't have a kitchen aid before.  I thought about adding more flour, but didn't.  The bread seaped over the edges...sort of like the cake-splosion...how do I KEEP doing this?  Alicia walked in just as I was pulling my deformed bread out of the oven and kind of chuckled.  I somewhat playfully yelled, "It's not funny when it just keeps happening!!!"  But, really, it kind of is.  Oh well.  The bread tastes okay but it baked with weird ginormo holes in it and it was falling apart really easily.  So edible, but not how we usually like it.

The bread was so promising to begin with...it looked so smooth and it rose so well.  I guess it just gives me a good reason to try again tomorrow...put that kitchen aid to good use. ;)

After dinner, we watched a little Duck Dynasty and decided to make cobbler with the peaches bought.  And thank goodness, that turned out just fine.  I even made two mini mulberry cobblers since I had extra topping.  Yum, yum, and yum.  Peaches always make me think of my dad, who loves them!  He has a peach tree in his yard that he refused to prune one year because he was hoarding those peaches. My mom warned him, and boy was she right, the tree split right down the middle.  So sad, hopefully by summer 2014 it'll be bearing fabulous fruit and I'll be able to sit down with him and eat some yummy cobbler...made by my mom and we can put real ice cream on it. The ice cream here is weird, unless you sell your first born child to buy some at the import store, and we all know if I was going to sell a kid for a luxury item it would be for a $2 can of Dr. Pepper...hands down.

This also, does not look appetizing, but it was really yummy.  The mulberry was SO good too, but I forgot to take a picture and we ate it all. Whoops.

And now I am fat and full like a tick, still have quite a bit of tidying up to do, and I need to listen to at least an hour of Thai before bed. Is it the weekend yet?

Okay, this is kind of random, but I found these little tube thingys, almost the same size and shape as a pixy stick, but it's like nutella only with cashew instead of hazlenut.  Very, very good.  We picked these up at 7-11 last night, but I didn't try them until today.  Not sure why it has to be a mouse on the picture, but whatever.