My quarantine is over and I have been back at work. It's always fun to sit around at home and have me time, but it's horribly boring when you can't leave the house. During my stint as a couch resident I found I was often cold in the morning, so I took up drinking a lot of tea (also because I some how had it in my head that I would expel the virus from my system faster if I kept trying to fill myself with liquids). I went through most of our supply in a matter of a week and went to restock today while we went grocery shopping. I came across one called "Misto" that has apple, caju, something or another of rose and a few other things. It's quite good, slightly sweet, and strong. Sweet is important because I discovered somewhere in the last 4 years of living here, I have stopped liking my tea with sugar (except when it's Earl Grey with milk), lest I put a tad too much in and kill the flavor of the tea.

The DI season is about to start - will I handle it better than last year? I sure hope so - if the first week of school / traveling back from the states with 300 lbs of luggage hadn't given me a shingles attack, DI certainly would have.

Every time we ask for a pizza from Pizza Hut, they screw it up. Every time. Every time we wait and wait and wait for it to come just to send it back and ask for another one that is what we actually asked for. Anywhere in the States, this would spell death for the managers and whoever was screwing up phoned in orders, but not here. Here it means I am hungry and it's 10:30 and I still have no pizza.

At least it's healthy....

Ju has developed some rather strange eating habits. I chalk it up to my basic rule that snacking is okay as long as it's on healthy stuff. Don't all these health magazines keep telling us that grazing all day is more healthy than several full meals. A basic day of food might run like this:

7 am - yogurt with wheat germ
8:30 - banana squished up with powdered milk
10 am - two apples
11:30 - rice, beans, some frozen peas and maybe a can of sardines
3:30 - another apple and a yogurt drink
5:30 - 1 tomato, juice, a pear
7 pm - half a french bread roll, juice

Last week he would only agree to eat his veggie soup if I would let him dip his apple in it. He ate the entire bowl as a dip. On Monday we went out for sushi and he ate all the cucumber garnishes, the sea weed off several shrimp wraps, and the roe from the sushi rolls (large orange fish eggs that look like tapioca balls).

I have lately been obsessed with saffron. (I know there is a song in here somewhere) I had never bothered to buy it, not having any experience with it, and my general spice shelf never went that far into the realm of exotic (read: garlic, ginger, cinnamon, pepper, rosemary, oregano, etc), but starving late one night at a friends house where pizza had been ordered and everyone was happily eating (I am allergic to tomatoes, for those who don't know), I decided to eat an experimental concoction consisting of spaghetti, butter, black pepper, and saffron. Lo and behold, I have found a new unique flavor. I started putting it in everything I cook that is boring. The bad result of this is that it makes me want to eat more because it tastes good. I know you know this problem. I have a similar relationship to fresh garlic - if I can still taste it in my mouth or smell it in the air, I become an eating machine. I blame my vacation weight gain on this spice. .... Well, that and acarajé.

Ju is eating canned sardines and pumpkin and rice for dinner. Mmmmmm, healthy.


Ew, and he just called me in there to show me a maleka he picked out of his nose! Are all boys this gross? Makes you wonder how they grow up and marry....