Surviving the family

As I've mentioned before, my parents have 11 children. We're rarely all in the same place at the same time (the last time was here).
Laura, Owen and I are in South Carolina for a spring break visit, so we persuaded/convinced/cajoled/forced everyone to gather at Laurie's house Sunday. Somehow we managed to get some decent photos even though it was quite windy. (The tornadoes came through later.)

But Mom, I love newspapers!

Sometimes Laura gets what she wants

Like this photo, which she took, on my blog. I figured it was a simple request, so why not?

Fattening up the apostles

My Facebook friends know we got photos of our Milan apartment this week. One thing I mentioned is that it's very close to Santa Maria delle Grazie, which is the home of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper.
So the news of the past couple of days that the portion sizes depicted in re-creations of Christ's last supper have been growing for the past 1,000 years are pretty interesting. The New York Times mentions it on a couple of its blogs.

Laura's birthday presents collide

For her birthday, Laura got a globe. Or is it a puzzle? Well, to her it's a globe. To me it was a puzzle, and yes, I had a lot of fun putting it together. I'm hoping it stays in one piece for a while, but we'll see.
The little dog was Laura's project from her birthday party, which we held at Clay Cafe Studios in downtown Falls Church. We got everyone's creations back Saturday, and I still need to deliver some of them. They all turned out great.
Update: The puzzle globe's Amazon listing is here.

I could talk about dishes all day long

Well, maybe not, but all morning and into early afternoon, at least.
This post was prompted by fellow Foreign Service blogger Kolbi over at A Daring Adventure. She's contemplating "collecting" dishes and is wondering about how many to get, particularly in light of the possibility of future overseas moves. She's going with fiestaware, which is cool because when you mix and match, it looks like you planned it that way. (As an aside, she lives in Houston, so she has to be cool.)
When Kevin and I got married -- before we got married, when I was registering for gifts at various retail establishments -- I was horrified to learn that Dillard's wouldn't let me register for the Mikasa San Marco pattern because it had just been discontinued. I really, really liked it, way more than any of the other patterns available, so I went and registered at Macy's instead, where it still was available.
Thus begins our story.
We got a couple of (or maybe it was more like three or four) place settings as wedding gifts, plus a platter. The platter is really just a big, round plate, but it's come in handy for carrying things like cheesecakes. Yes, there was a time I regularly made cheesecakes. Now I couldn't even tell you where any of my springform pans are. But that's another story entirely.
Because the pattern was discontinued, we found some at a Mikasa outlet. We bought eight place settings ourselves. That got us to 12 place settings, I think. It's all in storage in Belgium or I would double-check.
But before buying those place settings, I also found some spare cups and saucers on eBay. So we have something like 12 more cups and saucers than we do full place settings. And no, this doesn't make any sense considering we don't drink coffee or tea.
I always thought I'd accumulate some more serving pieces. The gravy boat and underplate look cool -- and cost something like $75 or $100. So at some point I decided I was going to just get plain white things to supplement what I had. I thought it was a good choice because there are lots of pretty white choices in a range of prices. It's also a lot less obvious if everything doesn't match.
I also should mention that dishwasher-safe is a big issue for me. Mikasa San Marco can go in the dishwasher because, even though the pattern is pretty fancy, they're really stoneware and not bone china.
One day I was in Kohl's -- where there's always a sale -- and full sets of the Oneida Wicker pattern were marked down. I got eight place settings, plus a platter and vegetable bowl.
How often do I use all of this? The Mikasa mostly has been for somewhat special occasions, but the Oneida we use every day (at least when we're on the same continent). And then they all get mixed together when we need more than one or the other provides or if the shape or size of the bowls works better for what we're serving. I still have all of those Mikasa cups and saucers, but I have shed some of the Oneida mugs. I couldn't justify the weight -- the State Department has limits on what we can ship and store -- for something we don't ever use.
However, I have thought about sneaking into my parents' house in the middle of the night and swiping all of my mom's Noritake Benedicta. Isn't it cool? There's a gold edge you can't see very well in the photo. I didn't appreciate bone china back when we used to eat off it every now and then, but now I love it -- at least in this form. My dad bought it for her when he was stationed in Guam with the Air Force, and some pieces haven't survived their nearly 40 years of marriage (and 11 children). My sister Laurie and I have bought some things for the collection over the past few years. There might even be a gravy boat somewhere. But that's in South Carolina, not Trinidad or northern Virginia or Italy.
Closer to home, sure, I'd still love to have the San Marco gravy boat. But we hosted Thanksgiving in our temporary apartment in November, and I bought a two-pack of white gravy boats at Bed Bath & Beyond. And I think they'll get along with everything else just fine.

American football in Milan

I'd forgotten about Italy's mini-NFL -- although I did sort of review Playing for Pizza way back when -- but was reminded of it by a note in the most recent consulate newsletter. The season will be over before we arrive, but there's always next year. So do plan on cheering on the Milano Rhinos next spring.

Is always looking forward a bad thing?

One of our Foreign Service friends has mentioned that one of his biggest pet peeves with his co-workers -- now former co-workers, as he returned to "normal" life -- was the obsession with what's next. It didn't seem like anyone was ever happy with what they had at the moment; everyone was always planning for their next post.
I think it's a trap we all fall into a lot. I think it's particularly bad for entry-level officers, whose tours generally are two years long. Two years isn't long, and the bidding process is structured in such a way that you generally find out midway through your first tour where you're going next. That means, for example, that by the time we get to Milan, we will have known for almost two years that's where we were going.
I found myself thinking about all this this morning as Owen and I hung out with some church friends who also live in our apartment complex. Most of them are preparing for their first post with the State Department, and they're going to Beijing; Bridgetown, Barbados; Istanbul; Dakar, Senegal; and Surabaya, Indonesia. Throw in Milan and another Beijing (our hostess, whose husband was in A-100 with Kevin) and it's a pretty diverse mix.
But even though I really, really wanted Milan, and don't want to go anywhere else anytime soon, and am more than ready to be there RIGHT NOW, I found myself wondering what it would be like to be going to one of those other places instead.
I guess I've fallen farther into the trap than I realized.

What would you do?

The U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, is big enough that we all know someone who's there or was there very recently. We have friends there now, in addition to other border consulates in Nuevo Laredo, Nogales and Monterrey.
Yesterday three people from the CJ consulate -- a local employee, her spouse and another employee's husband -- were shot and killed on their way home from a gathering at another employee's home. News stories I've read also mention children in both cars -- including a 4- and 7-year-old who also were shot but survived.
It's sickening and depressing and horrifying and so many other things. Now the State Department has authorized evacuations for family members at Mexican border posts. It looks like most (if not all) of our friends are staying put for now. It's hard to know what we'd do in a similar situation. But I know I'm praying and hoping everyone stays safe.

We could play "Identify the dread disease"

Or I could just go ahead and tell you to be very, very careful when cooking things in hot oil. Like if you were going to make curried channa and potato.
I did just that yesterday. Yes, burned the heck out of my hand with sizzling-hot vegetable oil AND completed the recipe. (Channa is chickpeas, and it's an Indo-Trini dish.) It was for an international dinner at church last night, which was a lot of fun.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, it doesn't work well for a right-handed person to try to get their camera to auto-focus on their right hand while holding the camera in their left one.

It's all about the art

This fresco by Giotto in the Peruzzi Chapel in Florence's Santa Croce is in the news. Restorers have discovered details -- they're far from new since it was painted in about 1320 -- that are visible using ultraviolet light. (This story at Artdaily.org shows a good example.)
Isn't it exciting? Did you need a reason to come and visit when we get to Milan? (Florence isn't far away!) Might this be it?

Happy birthday to Laura

My baby -- my original baby -- is 9 years old today. She celebrated by wearing pajamas to school. OK, so it was the third-graders' pajama day anyway. And I wouldn't let her wear the footed ones. But still I wonder why I never got to wear my pajamas to school.
We're having a party with a group of her friends next weekend, but tonight we're going to dinner. Kevin told Laura she got to pick the place, and I heard Qdoba mentioned. I do love me a poblano pesto burrito.This is a photo I took of Laura for her application to the American School of Milan a few weeks ago. Kevin and I agree it doesn't really look like her, but it's the best I've got. I guess that's a sign I need to start taking more photos.

I do a lot of thinking about food

This may shock some people, given my rather slight size and affinity for using whatever might be lurking in the back of the fridge. (I made chicken parmesan the other day using string cheese.) But I was overjoyed to discover a new Foreign Service blog, For Lack of Tacos. Its author talks all about food (cooked by herself and others) in the Dominican Republic. It would have been great to do something similar in Trinidad, although since I wasn't really adventurous in eating there it would have been a lot harder.
When Kevin joined the Foreign Service, even before we were posted to Port of Spain, there were discussions about whether we'd have to ship crates of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to wherever we got sent. Laura was an immensely picky eater -- still is in some ways -- and there was concern she wouldn't have anything to eat. It ended up not being a problem because U.S. foods are readily available in Trinidad and because Amazon sells this in bulk:
No rabbits are harmed in the making of Annie's products, and their several varieties of macaroni (and other types of pasta) and cheese are great considering that they come from a box. It's not every day a person can make macaroni and cheese in 75 easy steps (my sister Amanda's take on my favorite mac-and-cheese recipe, courtesy of Martha Stewart). Somewhere in between are these macaroni and cheese suggestions I came across on Yahoo yesterday. I admit to being just a little grossed out by the one with hot dog slices on top, but to each his/her own.
Italy will be a whole new food universe for our family. It's more than pizza, you know. In case you had doubts, check out The Silver Spoon, which is one of Italy's top cookbooks. Kevin got me the English translation for my birthday in November, and it's very interesting. Of course, there are some things in there I'll never cook because we won't eat them. (It's more than squid, not that we eat that, either.) But it's a sort of Joy of Cooking for Italian food.


Of course, there are plenty of things closer to home I won't eat, either. I got Real Cajun, a cookbook by Donald Link, out of the library recently. When Kevin was on Jeopardy back in 2002, his claim to fame was being the Cajun who doesn't eat seafood. Well, I must be the Cajun who's more than a little disturbed by the number of photos of pigs adorning the pages of this book. Yeah, pork is a Louisiana staple. I know my roots. But I don't need to see the live version alongside the recipes. But if you're the type who wants to make sausage from scratch, maybe this is the book for you. (I did make a pork roast from this that turned out OK, and I'm going to try the roll and biscuit recipes before returning it. But pureeing chicken livers isn't something I'm up for.)

I might, however, be up for some more baking. I'm considering investing in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I've talked to a couple of friends who have it, but if you've got an opinion on it, let me know.

Apparently it's a particularly tasty volume

Owen just crawled into my bedroom and closed the door behind him. By the time I got in there to see what in the heck he was doing, he'd pulled some of the books off the shelf under my bedside table.
But no, that wasn't good enough. He also had to chew on the books. Apparently Rick Steves' Italy 2009 is very tasty. This isn't the first time it's suffered such a fate.