Food times

While in Abuja, I was fortunate enough to be able to take a trip up north with some colleagues. I was anxious to see something outside of Abuja as everyone EVERYONE kept assuring me that Abuja was not really Nigeria and I had to go outside to see the REAL Nigeria.

Now, to be honest, these sorts of exhortations always kind of annoy me. Perhaps because I often live in cities or towns where expats and locals alike assure me that it is not the REAL fill-in-the-blank, but rather if one goes elsewhere, they will then find the REAL fill-in-the-blank. I assume that these cities and towns are real enough for the inhabitants.

Regardless, I was going to go out of town for several days. Any sort of going out of town is immeasurably exciting. The drive was going to take about five-six hours. We headed out of town, four of us all together. Jimo, our driver, got to pick the music as he was driving. We listened to the same evangelical cd, which I believe consisted of five songs, the entire six hour trip. By the end, I was singing along to the songs which were a mix of English and Yoruba. I almost accepted Jesus Christ as my personal saviour (again).  But then I realized that the songs were slowly driving me insane.

On the way, we stopped to use the restroom at a mosque/market area. One woman in our group was OBSESSED with mangoes. OBSESSED. Every time we saw a mango stand on the side of the road, we had to stop so that she could buy some. She was searching for the mythical perfect mango. Sweet, juicy, not so stringy. At every stop, her mango dreams were shattered by sour mango, stringy mango, hard mango. We started getting out with her to check them and were all trying to find the perfect mango, mainly so the search could stop. It was to be a theme throughout our three day trip. Luckily, the other woman’s obsession was bananas, which were easily found, purchased, and consumed with much delight. The bananas were different from what I grew up with–smaller, sweeter but with a chewier almost gummy flesh.

Upon learning I hadn’t had much Nigerian food, they made sure I tried suya (a spicy barbecue type of meat dish that we ate with rice cakes that were more spongy than rice cakes i’d had in japan or korea). The suya was quite good, though I have to admit to being leary of eating it as it was in a black plastic bag and I’ve had challenging meals in the past from black plastic bags (see Mongolian adventures with marmot). After I got over my initial hesitation, it was amazing. I love spicy food and after my companions were convinced I wouldn’t choke, they kept shoving suya at me. Next we stopped and bought roasted corn from the side of the road.

I was incredibly interested in the roasted corn because everyone in the car was so excited about it. Even Mango stopped talking about mangoes for five minutes and started waxing lyrical about roasted corn. This was going to be good.

I think one has to grow up with or become accustomed to this manner of corn to truly enjoy it. I grew up on very sweet corn in the states and when it was roasted, it was usually buttered and then had the husk replaced around the ear to preserve the juices, then just roasted to a goldeny color. This corn wasn’t as sweet in the first place, and then was roasted to more of a hazelnut brown, so it was much harder/chewier than I had anticipated. There was no burst of sweet corn juice in your mouth. It was kind of dry and hard. Not unpleasant and something that I think could become very crave-worthy with time, but it wasn’t something I was going to start hankering for immediately.

The last thing I ate that was noteworthy was pepper soup. My friend Banana took us to a famous restaurant and I asked for advice on what to pick out. She said I’d probably like the pepper soup. I asked what was in it. Beef. and spice. Awesome.

She went to the other counter and I stayed at the counter with soup and myriad other things. I should have followed her, in hindsight. So I order fried plantains and pepper soup. They dish me up my soup and plantains and I go to take my seat. I’m trying not to look at my soup because I believe there is a jaw on top of the soup. I sit down, look at my plate and there is in fact a jaw in my soup. This disturbs me on two levels. One, I’m sorry, I’m an American from the city. While I lived in Mongolia, I saw sheep bits scattered around the house, ate meat that distinctly still looked like the animal, but I never really got over the idea that meat was in the shape of a square or a rectangle or sometimes a strange triangle and came wrapped in either paper or plastic wrap and styrofoam. I know it is wrong and a little disrespectful to the animal to forget that you are eating its actual body, but that’s how I roll. So the whole actual jaw in my bowl of soup was a little disconcerting. But ALSO, the jaw was patently smaller than a bovine jaw. I was pretty sure it was a goat jaw. And while I can eat sheep (though after two years of mutton, sometimes I can’t hold it down), goat has just never been something I could get behind. I tried, though. I ate as much broth as I could, but as I was poking around looking for veggies or pieces of meat not attached to teeth, I found other bits and bobs of the goat. White parts with fili-type pieces waving about. Solid and waxy looking brown bits. Rough looking red bits. The soup and my imagining where exactly these bits came from defeated me. I fished out the last of the recognizable bits and asked Jimo if he was still hungry and if so, would he like my soup? He was shocked I didn’t eat more and readily agreed. First thing? He picked up the jaw and sucked the meat right off of it. Again, it is my own squeamish citified whatever, but there is something kinda weird about seeing one jaw engulf another jaw, slurping it clean.

I finished my plantains and nostalgically thought of the days when I would eat blowtorched marmot or boiled horse penis. (Okay, it wasn’t like I liked it or ate more than a bite. But still! I used to be much more adventurous. If Anthony Bourdain ever met me, he’d greet me with nothing but mockery and disdain.) But I’m not that person anymore. It may be obnoxious, but I accept that I prefer to think of meat in a square little packet and not actually hanging on a bone.

Beyond the food, the scenery on the way north and in the north was so beautiful. Trees and red earth and rolling hills. Different types of architecture everywhere–huts, mosques, churches, buildings in the process of falling down and buildings being built. All very active and wonderful. It made me want to see more of Nigeria.

I don’t tend to talk about work in these pages. But there was one thing that happened that just about killed me. We were watching a peer educator give a condom demonstration to some drivers. One driver became extremely agitated during the demonstration and started gesturing very decidedly at his crotch and making all of these diagnal motions with his hands and all of the other drivers started laughing. Then the peer educator’s supervisor grabbed the demonstration phallus with both hands, and while talking rather heatedly, swung the phallus (at crotch level mind) to the right, to the left, straight up, and pointing rather far down. The initial man gestured again and the supervisor performed the same dance. I finally asked my friend what was going on and apparently the initial man was quite firm in his conviction that a man whose penis pointed to the right or left would not be able to wear a condom, because every demonstration phallus is always straight. So he believed that the condoms only went on straight penises. The supervisor was trying to demonstrate that it was only because of the demonstration phallus standard, but that condoms could go on a penis that pointed any which way.

The conversation? Went on for fifteen minutes, a continuous cycle of heated debate and pointing with the demonstration phallus. Awesome that he was getting proper information and great that he felt comfortable discussing it, but HYSTERICAL to see this supervisor who was an incredibly serious man waving about a demonstration phallus at crotch level while speaking excitedly.

The cap on the entire trip was on the way home, when I started noticing signs. One church was named “The Unashamed of Christ Church”

Utter Destruction of Cake Dreams

First, a sadness. My digital camera has finally given up the ghost. New batteries do not revive it. This is particularly sad today, as I had brilliant images to share. The images of my cake.

In an effort to be economical, expand my repertoire of talents, and generally impress myself and others, I’ve decided to engage in more home cookery. I’ve been reading my cookbooks for inspiration (except for the Anthony Bourdain one. Oh I read that, but mainly for the snarky little comments and not because I’ll actually cook anything in it. I especially like to read that one after watching his show on tv. He’s my dream date. Except he’d probably find me a terribly unadventurous eater and mock me mercilously. Perhaps that’s also part of the appeal…) and had found a leek and potato soup recipe and a coconut cake recipe that looked heavenly. The draw of the coconut cake was probably partially to do with watching Gilligan’s Island far too many times as a child as much as the illustration of the gloriously fluffy pinkly tinted cake in my Amy Sedaris book. The recipe looked complicated but what are holidays from work for than for attempting complicated cakes?

First the soup. Easy as anything. Just leeks, shallots and potatoes simmered together then a bit of salt, pepper, and rosemary and into the blender. Easy, yummy, and enough to freeze three helpings for lunch this week. Economy is fun!

Then the cake. Which, by the way, is not at all economical and took about a million eggs in various forms. The batter for the cake was just a load of eggs and sugar whipped together, then cake flour (sifted. and that is not a suggestion as I found out to my detriment later, but a necessity. Who knew?) and melted butter and vanilla. It is very satisfying to whip eggs and sugar to such a frenzy that they threaten to escape over the edge of the bowl to wreak cholesterol mayhem throughout the kitchen. Following the directions, I carefully sprinkled the cake flour into the batter and gently folded it in. Then I poured in the melted butter and gently fooooooooolded it in, careful not to overmix. I was a bit too careful because as I was pouring the batter into the well-greased pans, rivers of melted butter and vanilla swirled and created canyons through the pale yellow fluff. So I tried to fold it in but may have managed to just hide it at the bottom. Into the oven went the pans. I didn’t have two round cake pans, but i had a glass round casserole dish and a square glass casserole dish. So I figured those would work well enough and then the cake would look architectural and arty.

As the cake was baking, I started on the coconut pastry cream. I KNOW! Pastry cream! Big time, baby! So I put the coconut milk, regular milk, heavy cream and 100 grams of sugar to boil. By the way, this may be the only recipe in the book that is on weights and not cups, tbsps, whatever. So I went online to find the conversions for each ingredient. Pain. In. The. Ass. While the liquids get started on their boiling, I measure cornstarch (a great crapload of cornstarch. 125 grams of cornstarch is 18.75 tablespoons.) sugar, four eggs, and four egg yolks into the bowl and start whipping that all together.  Whip those, and the timer goes off for the cakes.

The cakes are a bit lopsided because they are so much air and I may have banged a few doors while searching for things and so. But they are golden brown and smell heavenly, if a bit eggy for my taste. (It is a genoise cake. And you might think that when I read the ingredients and saw six eggs on the list i’d think, hunh that might taste kind of eggy. I didn’t but it does.) So I set them on the table to rest for a minute because as I’m pulling them out, the milk on the stove starts to boil over and the smell of burned milk and coconut fills the kitchen. Race over, then pour a bit of the milk into the egg mixture to temper it so that the eggs don’t scramble when I add them to the milk. Thinking that I have achieved this, I then pour the eggs into the hot milk. I’m not sure at first if it is the eggs or the cornstarch, but things get really lumpy really quickly. The recipe says to stir until the mixture is like custard, then pour it into the bowl with butter and vanilla and whip til all incorporated.

Amy Sedaris must have fabulous arms. As did our foremothers. Christ on a leash, whipping a ridiculous amount of hot eggs and cornstarch is no easy feat! I’m stirring and stirruing the mixture on the stove and realize that I have no idea what custard is supposed to look like. I never make custard. I never eat custard. Is it supposed to be shiny? Matte? lumpy? So after the eggs and milk look incorporated, I pour it into the mixing bowl to whip with the butter. Thank god for my motorized hand mixer is all I have to say. My arms are still sore from stick fighting class and I’m not sure I could have gotten everything mixed correctly otherwise.

As I’m whipping I’m thinking back to the photo of the pretty fluffy pink cake. So I decide to add red food coloring to make it delicately pink. Except of course the yolks have made the base orangey so any red I add will not have that delicate pink look. And I also don’t realize until I have the food coloring upended over the cake that this isn’t a dropper bottle, but a bottle big ole open end bottle. A fair amount of red comes splashing out so now the custard looks vaguely raspberry colored but really gross raspberries. Then I saranwrap the custard and set it in the fridge to cool.

Figuring the cakes must have cooled enough to be removd from their pans, I run a knife around the edges of the cakes and the edges aren’t even touching! Perfect! Should be easy to get out! I grab two plates, place one plate over the casserole dish, and upend the casserole dish over the plate. Nothing happens. I shake the cake a little. Nothing happens. So I flip the whole thing back over and see that the top has fallen off the cake, but not the bottom. I take my knife and poke at the underside of the bottom and find that is rather stuck. So I scrape the cake out the best I can and end up with bits and pieces of genoise cake on the cake plate. The square cake is still in the pan, because I’m not trying to see if I should have waited until a bit cooler to try and remove the cake.

So, to whit, rather than have a lovely round faintly pink coconut encrusted cake, I have a plate full of bits and pieces, a square pan that I’m afraid of, and vomitously pink custard cooling in the fridge.

I have decided not to attempt the swiss buttercream frosting at this time.

And I really wish my camera hadn’t died.

Food is just freaking me out lately

So last week I ate durian and chicken feet. Dare food.

I thought once I’d left behind my years of volunteering and the like, I’d be able to stop eating dare food. Clearly that wasn’t the case, as I’ve still been ‘tempted’ with half-formed duck embryos, fruit that smells like vomit and tastes like death, and roasted bugs. Even though these things turn my stomach, I’ve still never really thought of myself as a non-adventurous eater.

I’ve eaten horse penis for chrissakes. Horse PENIS. That should get me out of the consumption of most dare food. It certainly tends to win the dare food contests that people get into around these parts. Oh, what’s the strangest thing you’ve eaten?

A worm? yawn.

Goat’s eyes? borrrrring.

Natto? wake me up when you finish your fascinating story about fermented soybeans.

Horse sashimi? Please, I raise you

HORSE PENIS!

What’s up? Got nothin’?

I THOUGHT SO!

Anyway, even after eating horse penis (what the hell kind of people are going to find my blog NOW? There are some random searches that find their way to this site…), the cosmic energy of the universe still won’t let up on the dare food. So I’m in gag reflex training for balut. I know it is coming. Just gotta prepare.

However, I don’t think I’m doing a good job of preparing, frankly. Because I realized today that even with the horse penis on my resume, there are still relatively tame things that trip me up. Things that pretty much everyone who grew up where I did should be able to eat without qualms.

My housekeeper was all psyched earlier this week about making seafood curry. She makes amazing seafood dishes. I’ve had them at my friend’s house. So she went by the wet market early today to pick up the freshest seafood possible to make the seafood curry. All day at work through a very poor lunch at a meeting, pizza party to celebrate promotions, everything, I kept dreaming of the seafood curry. Mmmm, shrimp and fish and crab in a curry. What could be better?

Except.

I get home, change, and run to the kitchen to survey the delicious dinner. Lifting the top off the pot I spy

shells.

The only little animals that had been removed from their shells were the shrimp.

Mussels? Still in the shell. Also, incredibly ugly and bizarre meat bits make up the mussel. I peeked in the shells and thought, I have absolutely no idea what to do with that. There was this pink wavier thing with a dark beard or some ungodly bit on it and it was stuck to the shell and trying to remove it you could see the tissues stretch and then relax back to shape, stretch then relax back. I was unsuccessful in all attempts to remove the mussel from the shell as the stretching and relaxing just…got to me.

Crabs? Still in the shell. I have never had to crack crabshells before. The crabmeat has always been neatly removed and waiting for me, often in a quesadilla. They are some ugly fuckers aren’t they? Look remarkably like insects. Big crappin’ insects. The crabs were cut in half straight down the middle of the back. So eventually I was able to tease out some bits from the center, but I had no idea how to get the majority of meat. I’m pretty sure that you’re supposed to get more than a forkful of crabmeat from a crab. There were the legs, but do you eat what is in the legs? How do you get to it? I seemed to recall having seen crab cracker thingamabobs somewhere before and figured that there must be something in there you could eat, but after I twisted the crab leg a few times and then became kind of fascinated with how easily the joints moved, then realized I was playing with the carcass of a crab that had been happily skittering and clicking its way across the ocean floor before being scooped up to eventually land on my plate, I put myself off crabs in about five minutes.

There was something else confusing in the pot as well that I can’t remember now. And there was squid, which doesn’t have a shell, but is back to freaking me out after the successful consumption of squid cooked in its own ink last week. Just the sections and the way the legs still kind of wave around in the curry liquid reminded me of the movie Aliens and then I thought, if I eat this will it eventually burst through a hole in my belly with a baby?

The cat was whining up a storm so I took some bits and put them in his bowl. Then after I was done playing with the crab leg/crab half I put that in his bowl as well. I scooped up a fair amount of the broth and then all the shrimps I could find in the bowl and ate that with some pita bread. It was quite tasty.

Then I called my downstairs neighbor and asked if she and her husband wanted the rest. She asked if I wanted to eat with them but I said I was full. I couldn’t very well admit that I actually had no idea how you were supposed to eat the majority of the animals in the pot, and that I had thought about it to the point where I was no longer able to eat the little animals in the pot.

Her husband came up for the soup and was quite excited by all the mussels and crabs in there.

Good luck.

Smells like hell, tastes like… creamy hell

Every country has its dare food. You know, the food that the citizens ask you immediately upon arrival if you’ve tried and if you haven’t they spend ungodly amounts of time trying to get you to eat it, saying such encouraging things like, “It is an acquired taste” and “It is supposed to be an aphrodisiac” and “After you get past the smell, the taste isn’t bad at all”.

While I’m all for cultural sensitivity and blah de blah, sometimes I get tired of dare food. If it was sooooo nice to eat, would you have to talk people into it?

No.

Do you have to talk people into eating chocolate?

I rest my case.

I was recently in a town that is famous for durian. I’ve heard of durian before, famously stinky fruit that is banned from hotels, planes, the like. But I’ve never eaten it nor smelled it before.

Nothing like being in a town famous for its durian during a festival for getting a right-on introduction.

We had just finished a feast of seafood. I’m being more adventurous in general in my eating. I’ve never thought of myself as overly picky, but some things… Squid and octopus have always icked me out for reasons I can’t explain. The shape or that they are described as chewy or that we used to dissect squid in science class or the weird globular balloon that is the head of the octopus but they have a beak… I don’t know why, but squid and octopus have always equalled don’t eat in my book. Also, don’t eat heads of things. It is impolite.

So the table had a spread of shellfish soup, fried tail of tuna, boiled head of tuna, kinilaw (the tuna belly in cubes with a sauce of vinegar, calamansi, and salt and some cut up cucumber and some random white vegetable), squid cooked in its own ink and noodles with squid and prawns. I’ve always said that I don’t like seafood. And really, in the main, I don’t. However, you aren’t getting away with not eating seafood here.

Side note: one of my dining companions, as I was eating a bit of plain rice, asked me if I’d become accustomed to eating rice. I kind of blinked at her and said, ummm, we have rice in the States. Yes, but you eat bread. Yes, but we also eat rice. The funny part about this is that bread is readily available here and there has been a strong American presence for ages. I’m sure she’s seen Americans eat rice before.

Anyway, so I take a bit of everything. Fried tail? Good. Noodles? Good. Kinilaw? Quickly becoming my favorite. Squid in ink? Totally yummy. A smoky flavor was added to the squid making the chewiness kind of nice. The head of the tuna?

Well, I didnt’ take the eyeball.

But, when asked if I wanted some I did say, “Is there any cheek left?”

Which for most of the world may not sound weird. But for someone who grew up wondering where the ‘meat’ part of the animal was on the anatomy charts (you can see the muscle and bone clearly, but where is the meat?), that was a leap into adventure, my friends!

Anyway, after dinner everyone is all, DURIAN PARTY!!!

yay!(?)

And luckily for us, the restaurant we ate at was right in front of Durian Park. It was a tent set up with tables underneath and mountains of durian. You could smell the durian when you were still relatively far from the tent. For those who haven’t smelled it….  It is a very sharp smell. Kind of ammonia-ny. Kind of garlic-y. Kind of rotten. The fruit itself is the size of a honeydew, with wicked spikes coming out from all directions. This is a warning from the durian. Don’t touch me! I’ll hurt you!

No one listens to the wise warning of the durian.

But everyone in my party is all, oh it smells terrible but the taste! The taste is heaven! The head of our party goes to get what ends up being four durian for our table of seven. That’s a lot of durian. Two people don’t eat it at all (the two most eager to watch me eat it, by the way. horrible) and the others just start tucking in. Durian pods have an outer skin and the inside meat is rather soft and creamy. They tell me not to smell it, to just eat it. So I try to put it in my mouth without smelling it. Try that with food sometime. Just put it in your mouth but don’t smell it. Nigh on impossible. Unless you do as I do and tilt your head back and drop it in. This may then cause raucous laughter at the table but ignore them. They are just jealous.

So I tried two different varieties of durian.

I don’t get it.

Apparently, had I tried it a third time, then I would have gotten the bug and been all, durian rocks!

As it is, the texture is similar to eating a very well toasted marshmallow, with the tougher outer skin and the very creamy center. The taste is rather bitter/garlic/blech. If it were sweet, with that texture, it would be quite something I think. But the taste…

Also, all the tables had bottles of coke on them. I was asking about that. Apparently, you need to have a coke chaser with durian to fully appreciate the flavor. Durian is better with coke.

Yeah, right.

They are just killing the taste.

So after the durian party, people were all, you should eat balut! I made the reasoned argument that one dare food per day is quite enough.

Balut, for the unintitiated, are duck eggs that have been allowed to slightly form into little ducks then buried. One of my friends, who quite enjoys them, told me it is like eating creamy meat. As long as you don’t get the ones that were removed too late because then they have little beaks and feathers and that doesn’t taste nice.

Creamy meat certainly doesn’t sound good.

However, I was spared from finding out because we had to get home.

Next day at dinner, one girl (who distinctly did NOT eat the durian) was making fun of my lack of balut and timidity with the durian. She then pointed to a bowl of chicken feet and was all, try some! They are delicious. but with a look that is all, you won’t eat chicken feet! What choice did I have???  I popped the scaly leathery looking suckers in my mouth and sucked the flesh from the bones, delicately spitting the bones out. The look is far far worse than the taste and the taste is mainly of the sauce they were cooked in and the fat. Not a whole lot of meat. I’ve eaten worse tasting things. But I’d certainly not make a point of eating chicken feet again. Why when there are so many nice things out there?

Random Bits

I employ a housekeeper. She comes twice a week, cooks, cleans, does the laundry, etc. We communicate through notes. All in all, it is a very satisfactory arrangement. Except I think she believes that there are four of me, and that we all have poor taste in color coordination.

Four of me? I guess this by the amount of food that she makes for my dinner. The salads are enormous. I take them to work the next day to share with my office. Of eight. On top of the salads (which are good, don’t get me wrong, just enormous. I’ve learned that if I eat the salad at every meal, it will take me two days to finish it. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner), she’ll make a main course. Tuesday it was a Japanese stew that I could consume about half of before it went bad. Thursday it was a roast chicken with potato, carrot, and onion. And another salad. And a huge bowl of cut-up mango.

Thursday’s roast chicken posed another problem beyond the amount. It was a full chicken. Not chicken breasts. Not all parceled out like they do at KFC. Just a whole chicken, balefully staring up at me from its bed of root veggies. I’d had a long day at work and was starving. So I scooped up some veg onto a plate then grabbed a knife to cut some chicken.

And realized

that I’ve never in my life (32 years)

cut up a whole chicken.

I had no idea where to start. It was smallish as it was not one of the fancy American hormone filled chickens. So that was a plus. But still. Where do you begin? I kind of stabbed at it with the front of the blade, trying to find a fleshy part. I heard random small crackings and imagined I was cutting through some tiny bones or whatever were in there. So I stopped smacking the blade into the curved top of the chicken and started hacking at the appendages, figuring that if i separated them off, maybe the ‘meat’ part of the chicken would be more visible. So I got what I believe to be a wing separated from the body and pulled some of the meat off to throw to the cat that was attacking my feet and crying trying to get to the bird. Then I poked the knife in at the torn-away site to see if there was more fleshy bits. There were, so I tried cutting them and eventually flipped the whole thing over to find a treasure trove of flesh. Yay. So I sliced a few more bits off, wrapped the rest up, and went to eat my dinner.

The next day, I was going to cut up the rest of the chicken to take for lunch. Except I still wasn’t really sure HOW you cut meat off the chicken. Either the birds here just don’t have any meat or I’m an idiot because I couldn’t really FIND any more meat. Not in serious hunks anyway. There were more bits and bobs that I was able to scrape off, half to me and half to the demoncat, but nothing substantial. I’ve heard two people can eat off of one chicken, but are these fairy people or diet maniacs? Because there was a good bit of skin and bone on this thing, but not a lot to eat.

But other than the chicken, which I’m sure has more meat on it that I just can’t find, my dinners are ridiculously substantial and almost scary in proportion. Hence, I believe she thinks there are four of me.

The struggle with the towels and bathmat is what leads me to believe that she thinks I have crap color coordination abilities.

I have two bathrooms (okay, I have 3.5 bathrooms, but two that I keep stocked) and two sets that go in these bathrooms. One is lavendar and dark brown, the other is orange with cream and light grey zebra striped towels. At least, this is how I imagine it should be as those are the color schemes I had in mind when I bought the items. However, I’ve noticed that the towels migrate. When I set things up with the orange bathmat, grey/cream and orange towels, after my housekeeper comes in, they migrate to where the grey/cream towels have been replaced by the rest of the orange towels or by the brown towels. Then, the lavendar towels are left on their own with the lavendar bathmat and lavendar and white shower curtain. So I’ll go back and change everything around. Then the next time, it will all be changed around again. It is a silent battle of wills and taste.

Which, if she has a lack of faith in my taste, that can only have increased over the past few days, as I’ve decided to paint my apartment. My walls are beige-y white depression color. So I’ve been painting them red and blue and orange. I have a few blocks of color on one wall in the hallway and am using them as permanent frames to place photos in. On another wall, I’ve painted red and orange polka dots in varying sizes. On a third wall, I’m painting a series of red, orange, and blue stripes.

It will either look awesome, or like insane clown children attacked my house.

My housekeeper hasn’t commented on the paint job yet. But she is making fajitas for dinner on Tuesday. I have a friend coming for a visit so we may actually get through most of the food. Although, I did tell my housekeeper that I had a friend coming to town. So she may decide to make more food than normal. So that we each have enough.