Back in the kitchen

Last night I decided to have some fun in the kitchen. I've learned the trick to sweet-talking my violently combustible oven and I refuse to use the grill after Keating's exploits, so it was a low-key event. I made up some stone-fruit pie 'cause I'm a geologist and that's the sort of thing I do. The pie was filled with an amazing combo of fresh nectarines and red plums, seasoned with brandy, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and featured my first attempt at a homemade crust. For dinner, I decided that I was too lazy to follow my normal obsession of stuffing food inside of food and decided to turn my pear, sweet onion, and edam cheese stuffed chicken breasts into a layered casserole served over seared portobello mushrooms with fresh green beans on the side. Very Mexican, I know. Despite it not having a single chili pepper in sight, the dinner came out AMAZING. As in, it was so good that Keating and I immediately divvied up the rest into jealously guarded Tupperware for today's lunches.

Now, as proud as I am of last night's dinner, I realize that it makes for terminally boring blogging. I am writing it mostly in an attempt to convince my parents that I really CAN COOK. You see, the kitchen gods hate me when it comes to cooking for my parents. In recent years, I have repeatedly set off the smoke detector (which was really awesome since I was cooking so that my mom could lie down with a migraine), overcooked chicken into shoe leather, nearly ruined my mom's pans, and accidentally got drunk while cooking the dinner at which Keating and I were introducing our parents. On this last trip home, I managed to put all that to shame.

I was trying to recreate a recipe I had made up down here and had completely wowed Keating with. I coated chicken breasts with breadcrumbs, fresh ginger, raw oats, and a dash of nutmeg and then baked them. These were then served with a homemade mango-chipotle salsa. The whole effect was sweet-and-tangy with a mildly nutty flavor. It was great. What I made for my parents was not. I shaved the ginger wrong (lengthwise) and over-baked the chicken, resulting in what looked like dusty turds covered in hair. That was nothing, however, compared to the salsa: I'm pretty sure it qualified as a chemical weapon. I don't know whether the problem came from using a different brand of canned chipotle peppers or if I somehow absentmindedly quadrupled the number of peppers I used, but it was hot enough to literally take my breath away despite having been eating Mexican-grade spicy since December. As soon as I could breath again, I gasped a warning to my dad before he could take a bite. Sadly for him, I think he assumed I was joking and took a nice, large forkful. I will never know quite how he managed to keep from spewing it back out, but he managed to not only swallow it but try to smile as though it wasn't actually as bad as it was, all while huge tears welled up in his eyes. It was at this moment that my mom walked into the dining room, having just finished a phone call with my brother. Fortunately for her, Dad and I were able to convince her to scrape all of the sauce off of her chicken without even trying it. Perhaps we were more convincing because we were both still choking and crying a little bit. Keating was spared the entire event as he was still in Mexico at that time and didn't arrive until I had already been informally barred (yet again) from being "helpful" in the kitchen.

Given my track record, I think I need to stop trying to cook for my parents while I'm ahead. They may never be convinced that I really do make some great food, but they will also never be able to blame me for a nasty case of salmonella (I think I gave Dad chemical burns, though). From now on, I think I'll just have to rock the pizza delivery option when offering to take care of a meal while I'm visiting.

P.S. - I swear that this is not the reason why Keating has lost ~40 lbs since we moved here. That's all exercise and fresh fruit/veg. I swear. Back me up on this, Keating???? Please????

Keating visits the dentist

While we were in Michigan, Keating and I both went in to the dentist to get our teeth cleaned. This was significantly scarier for Keating than it was for me because of who our dentist was: my father. (That's right savvy readers: my dad, the die-hard hockey player, is also a specialty dentist. He also has been known to stash chocolate covered caramels in his underwear drawer. Never fear, he still has all of his teeth.)

I can imagine that there are few things more unnerving than sitting down in the dentist's chair and looking up into your new father-in-law's face, except maybe if it is your girlfriend's dad instead of your FIL, but I haven't subjected a boyfriend to that since college (sorry Andy!). Dad was very kind to Keating and didn't even take advantage of his opportunity to mess with his head. Instead, they decided to mess with mine.

I was in the front of the office hanging out with my mom and a couple of the staff when Jeanie, who was assisting Dad, popped in to ask me to come back to the operatory room where Keating was. As I stepped into the room, I saw Dad using gauze to stop some bleeding in Keating's mouth and a bloody scalpel on the tray. WTF??!? Fortunately there hadn't been nearly enough screaming to make me think something bad had actually gone down, like some fraternity hazing taken too far.

It turns out that Dad, whose specialty is gum surgery, had cut away some excess tissue on one of Keating's front teeth. The tooth in question is slightly recessed anyway, and the extra gum tissue made it look far more recessed than it actually was. With one quick flick of the wrist, Dad had done wonders to Keating's smile, making it look as though his front teeth had been straightened overnight. Keating's smile looks even more fantastic than before, and he can now brag that he survived losing a knife fight to his father-in-law. Boys have the strangest ways of bonding.

UFC: Michigan

My parents are probably two of the toughest people I will ever know. My dad, for instance, in pushing the big 6-0 and still plays ice hockey year round. Right now, he has a double header scheduled for every Monday night, and a couple of weeks ago ended up playing in a triple header when one of the teams scheduled to play after his last game asked if anyone could substitute for them. All this was while still getting over being sick and having to be at work early the next morning.

Dad's crazy dedication to hockey pales before my mom's latest test of will, however. On 4th of July weekend, she took a spill on the boat thanks to an unfortunate wave and bashed up her left knee. The next morning, with her knee now the size of her head and unable to bend more than 5 degrees, she decided to stop by the ER to have it looked at. Her knee was too swollen to get a good look at it yet with an X-ray, so she was sent home with an ace bandage and the recommendation to call the local knee specialist to make an appointment for later in the week. When she was the specialist a couple of days later, he couldn't find anything in her X-ray and asked her to keep limping around on it until she could bend it to 90 degrees for an MRI but told her that he thought it was most likely a deep bone bruise. I had already arrived in Michigan by this point, and Mom refused to let something as minor as a swollen peg leg get in the way of spending time with me; my first day in town she insisted on taking me shopping for a new pair of jeans since mine were miserably ratty (Thanks Mom!!!), not to mention about 6 other errands. She continued to go to work each day, walk the dog in the morning before I woke up, etc.

The day before I left to return to Mexico, we got a call from her knee specialist: he had just gotten back the results on the MRI and wanted her in there ASAP since it turned out that she had broken her leg in her fall roughly 2 weeks before. The angle and location of the break prevented it from showing up in the X-ray, but it stood out brilliantly in the MRI. My mom had just spent the last couple of weeks wandering around on a broken leg, and I'm not even sure if she bothered to take more than 2 Advil the entire time. She will now spend the next 6 weeks in a leg brace and using a cane (it was already clear to everyone that she wasn't going to hold still long enough to bother with the crutches. Plus, she was too short for the adult sized crutches they had available.).

My dad likes to claim that the only two things in the world scare him: flying monkeys and my mother. Given just how scary-tough she is, I think I might have to add Mom to my list, too!

(For even more background on just how tough she is, my mom refused to let the doctor tell her she had broken her foot until after my wedding last fall so that she wouldn't have to wear a cast to the wedding. About 8 weeks ago during a minor surgery trying to sort everything out on that same foot, the doctors realized that she had been wandering around with a nearly completely torn ligament in her ankle. She had been taking the dog on 2 mile walks. Daily.)

Get well soon, Mom!

Adventures in grocery shopping

I have been absent from the blog for a couple of weeks while I enjoyed being lazy up in Michigan with my family. The university is closed for most of July, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get out of town and escape the rainy 65-degree weather. We got back to Mexico City early Thursday morning, returning to an apartment with little more than crackers and cocoa mix left in the cupboards. Today was grocery shopping day.

As previously discussed, grocery shopping is probably the single most consistent stressor in my relationship with Keating. Today it was for different reasons. Our plan was simple: Keating would call me after work (yeah, he teaches on Saturdays) and we would meet up at the Superama on his way home. This would have worked out wonderfully, except that I didn't realize until after his call that I was locked IN the apartment. I have locked myself out of places plenty of times, the best example being the time I had to break back into my house in Buffalo and got stuck halfway through the large, street-facing window in my living room and my neighbors all decided to neither help the mysterious flailing legs nor call the cops (either would have been appreciated). This was the first time I've accidentally locked myself in. I ransacked the whole apartment, but couldn't find my keys anywhere. This was doubly bad because our landline is a complete POS and has never once successfully dialed a cell phone and I have refused to get a cell phone. Not only was I trapped in the apartment, I couldn't even call Keating to tell him. For his part, Keating was waiting for me at the Superama, reading under a ledge to kill the time and escape the downpour. After a couple of failed attempts, I was finally able to get through to Keating's cell phone using skype (Mexican cell phones use different location codes than landlines) to ask him to rescue me. Checking his pockets, Keating realized that he had both sets of keys and agreed to come home to let me out. Unfortunately, he then wandered inside the Superama to pay our gas bill and left his umbrella behind. By the time he realized that he had left it, his umbrella was gone and he was faced with a long, wet walk home. I'm pretty sure I've seen him drier when stepping straight out of the shower!

Fortunately, in the end all turned out well: I was freed from the food-less apartment, Keating eventually dried out, and we bought food and a new umbrella. Given the frustrations with just getting to the store, the actual grocery shopping was a complete cake-walk! Now we're just hoping that the rain stops long enough to allow us to do our post-trip laundry (our clothes dry on a line in the garden).

Letters from the field 4: Dangers and Kidnapping

Dear Future Self,

Mexico is all over the American news right now, with two high profile assassinations and a 21-dead drug gang shootout all taking place this week. More disturbing than these reports, which really only focus on a small group of people in a small area, are the comments posted below them by readers. If I can believe the posts under CNN articles, it would appear that many Americans are taking the current Mexican violence to indicate that all Mexicans are violent and barbaric and that the US is better off coming up with a way to cut off all ties with our southern neighbor (not to mention expel all legal and illegal immigrants). To this mindset (who aren't reading this anyway, but whatever), I offer the following experience from field work:

The team had been driving 4WD "roads" in the rural hills beyond Lake Catemaco. The area there is sparsely populated, and ours was probably the first car to drive down that particular track in years. Needless to say, there are no road maps and no road signs -- why bother with road names when there are so few to bother naming? At one point, we spotted a small hut set back from the path and decided it would be worth asking directions. After a short conversation in which our team leader introduced us as a team of geologists from the university, the lady of the place loaned us two children to guide us. The boys, Fernando and Diego, were 10 and 8 years old, respectively and were best friends. Their families effectively live together following the death of Fernando's father 2 years ago, leaving him to be the man of the house. Wedging all 7 of us into the Jeep Wrangler, we set off in search of the path we were looking for.

The boys led us up hills with the enthusiasm and energy of kids who have not yet learned to look at the topography to gauge the easiest slope to climb. They taught us about the edible berries growing on the slopes. The berries, apparently called tejote, are shiny and black-ish blue, and taste a bit like overripe blueberries. Even more entertaining, the berries have an incredibly strong pigment that quickly stains one's mouth anywhere from deep purple to black depending on the number of berries eaten. Fernando and Diego told us about life on the ranch and how they milked the cows and helped to make cheese. Neither attended school, since their ranch is so remote that it would require a 2-3 hour hike each way to get to the nearest school; also, their help was needed to keep the ranch running. They were excited to be trusted with the important job of carrying rock samples (and we were relieved!), and they were absolutely euphoric when handed the rock hammer and entrusted with breaking up big rocks.

Diego and Fernando, our trusty guides.

About 6 hours after we took them, we returned them to their homes and thanked their mothers. Both Fernando and Diego happily joined us the next day as well, cracking jokes about the cow chips dissolving in the persistent rain. To thank them and their families, our team gave each family a bag of nonperishable foodstuffs that would otherwise require a long journey to the nearest store, as well as bags of candies and t-shirts for the boys ('cause no 10 year old boy is going to be excited about receiving dried beans). The families invited us in and served us coffee while we watched the end of the Mexico-France World Cup game.

Can you imagine a similar situation playing out in the US? Less than a year ago, it made news when concerned adults called authorities when they saw an 8-10 (?) year old boy walking the few blocks to his sports practice alone. Can you imagine parents giving their child (not to mention the neighbor kid) to complete strangers and watching them drive away?

Another example, this one not from the field exactly: Due to the impossibility of actually finding our street, we must ask taxis to pick us up on a street corner a couple blocks from our house. Normally this is not a problem, however, it is fairly eerie when we have to stand out there at 4 am to get a ride to the airport. We had to do that again last week when the Awesome Assistant took off to return to the US. Both times that I have been out there waiting for a taxi at that hour, someone from the area points out that hanging out on dark street corners isn't the safest move in a city, asks to make sure that we are OK, and offers to stay near us until the taxi comes. The first time, we were watched over by a taxi driver who we had already assured that we had previously called someone from another cab company to meet us. More recently, it was a car full of young men (about 20 years old, perhaps?), one of whom had clearly been studying his English and saw this as an amazing opportunity to practice the language and do a good deed at the same time. Both times, our guardians waited until our taxi arrived and could convince both us and them that he was our prearranged driver (passwords and such). Both times, our guardians were pretty much the only people that we saw out there.

Mexico is very sensitive to the real and perceived violence within its borders. While there are truly bad places to be (anyone remember Cabrini Green in Chicago?), for the most part Mexico is a country full of some of the most generous and hard-working people you will meet.

Hell, I basically kidnapped a cabbie last night while picking up a friend from the airport. Four hours, a traffic jam, two terminals (nowhere near each other), a delayed plane, and getting lost down a restricted hallway of the airport later, he was finally able to drop us off at my corner in front of the ice cream shop. He was gracious and entertaining the entire time, and it was great practice for my Spanish to spend those hours discussing geology, geography (he is working on his MS), sports, travel, etc. Thank you, Miguel. I'm glad I had enough money still on me at that point to give you the generous tip you deserved.

In short, three cheers for Mexico!

Cheers,

Shazta-of-the-present

Letters from the field 3: Yeah.

Dear Future Shazta,

I know that you haven't forgotten this field trip I just got back from. You really ever won't, short of a massive head injury. If that happens though, see if you can selectively forget the following things that I was unable to write about until now ('cause I kinda needed to calm down first):

1) This was the trip where you got a shock as to just how out of the loop you are with your team. After noticing some unusual bookkeeping practices, you started asking some pointed questions and found out that the grant was out of field money. No one had mentioned this to you before. Which means that for Year 1 of a field project, you have 2 weeks worth of field data to work with. Awesome. Especially since you didn't design your field work with this knowledge in mind. Associated with this, try to forget the extra beers and desserts purchased with the grant money, despite the lack of funding. Remember that you are not in the US, and there are different cultural norms at play here.

2) You also may have gotten into a standoff with one of your team members on a random Mexican hillside with competing GPS units, arguing over which way to go to find a pond you were searching for. For what it's worth, you were right (not difficult, since she insisted that you were standing IN the pond already, despite all evidence to the contrary). At any rate, you never did find the f-ing pond because, after the "debate," it was universally agreed upon to be too far away to hike to it while carrying an inflatable boat.

3) Ok, so to be honest, you may just want to completely block out all memories of that one colleague. She manages to get under your skin in ways that defy logic and leave you a frothing mess of resentment in the back seat of the truck (though you finally got to sit in the front seat a couple of times this trip. That's because she wasn't along on those days, having taken the other truck.). Just forget about her frequent use of "Chhh-chh-chhh" to get your attention the same way other people get the attention of their dogs (when they are misbehaving). Also forget about how hilarious she thought it was that a local boy said he couldn't understand your Spanish, and how she kept repeating the story over and over to everyone, despite the fact that you had been speaking English to your non-Spanish-speaking assistant and there is really no wonder that the little boy couldn't understand your "accent." Etc.

Oh well. Not every trip will be perfect. And you have heard from independent sources that your one colleague is fairly universally difficult to work with. Just take a deep breath and appreciate that her contract supposedly ends in one month. That, and learn how to do geochemistry really slowly so that it will fill up your time for a while.

Cheers,

Shazta