"Fun" Mexican Style

Update:  If you are looking for the corn silk remedy, it is at the bottom of the page.  ;)  Welcome to my blog, hope you stay and look around.

So, here is some of the "fun" we get to deal with living outside the U.S.  Today the electricity goes out.  Sam goes and checks and it has been cut without notification of any kind.  He goes into the electric company, who conveniently cut it right before their closing hours.  Being the second time we've dealt with this, he bypasses the line and goes to the supervisor.  He explains that our electricity has been cut and we have not paid the bill, because we have not received a bill, that it is the responsibility of said supervisors to make sure our bill is delivered and we would like to have our electricity reconnected.  IF the electric company cannot find our house to deliver the bill, but they can find it to cut the service, how long do you think it will take for them to find the house to reconnect it?  I know, about a week and that will be with Sam going in every morning and reexplaining to the same supervisor where our house is.  Said supervisor explains that there will be a work order created to reconnect now that we have paid our bill, we only need to pay the 80 peso fee for reconnection, for the second time.  Sam explains he will not be paying the reconnection fee since it is their fault not ours and he already paid a reconnection fee once and explained where our house is and wonders how they can find the house to cut the electricity with no notification.  She explains the electricity will not be reconnected without paying the fee.  We have electricity tonight and we did not pay their "fee", I will not continue the story as to not incriminate anyone.  This whole process of course took a good part of the middle of the day, a huge chuck of Sam's study time.  Bless his heart, I sure do love him for dealing with everything so well.

On another front, I guess the water company has decided that water will only be supplied during the evening and night hours.  Would have been nice to have a heads up, so I could have adjusted my showering, clothes washing schedules.  Still I'm grateful for electricity, water, internet and such other luxuries.  They seem to have cut the electricity to some of the apartments next door also and 80 pesos will be much harder on their budgets than ours.

We love being here.  We love our friends here.  This afternoon Hannah and Lena went over to a church ladies house and learned some new crafty stuff.  The boys had friend in the backyard helping them make a fort.  I'm not complaining at all.  It was a little discouraging and frustrating, but we're not complaining.  I just thought you might be interested in hearing some of the interesting things we deal with from time to time.

In more news, we sport green mustaches at are house instead of the traditional white ones.  :)

 The boys' fort they have been building in the backyard with the neighbors.  Quite impressive!

 Also, not all, but much of my herbal knowledge is obsolete here in Mexico.  I'm having to learn new natural and herbal remedies.  For example. My go-to advice for a UTI in the U.S. would have been cranberry tablets, which are easily purchased at the health food store.  Cranberries aren't easy to find here and most cranberry juices are loaded with sugar, which would defeat the purpose of using them for UTI.  My new Mexican remedy for UTI is fresh coconut water, oregano tincture and corn silk tea.  That's right, the "pello de elote" made into a tea or better yet an infusion.  When I told the vendor I wanted the corn with a lot of silk of the ears, he did not seem surprised.  I learned it is also good for heart problems, edema and to dissolve kidney stones.  I will have to discuss with one of the Mexican midwifes to see if it is contradicted in pregnancy, as it seem to have some natural diuretic proporties.

Image courtesy of kai4107 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Random Things We've Been Up To

We'll the kids and I have been hitting the books hard everyday, this is the most stable our life had been in about 4 or 5 years.  Everyone is enjoying seeing their progress day by day and week by week.  It's probably a little hard to appreciate this blessing we are enjoying if your whole life hasn't been picked up and dumped on its side a few times, but rejoice with us anyway.

Samuel's birthday is exactly one week after Haden's.  He's such a good sport about letting us go on and on about how it's almost Haden's birthday for the whole month of January.  Some extra money came in so we were able to do some special things on his birthday and he got a really cool Lego set.  His actual birthday was so packed full that I got the cake baked, but not decorated.  So we celebrated again Friday night when we finally got around to decorating the cake.  It was a little crumbly, so I was sure it was going to be even more a flub than Haden's.  I apologized a few times when I was trying to put it together.  Hubby came in and saved the day somehow and it turned out really nice.  It's held together with a LOT of icing.  Hahaha!

In other news I have tried some new recipes I got off of Pinterest.....my life since I discovered Pinterest.....Facebook who?  LOL!  So I found this recipe for Portabella Pepper Steak from Once Upon a Plate blog.  You can get the recipe by clicking the link.  So I made something a lot like it but my own version.  Portabella mushrooms are actually kinda "meaty" and comparitivly priced to meat and my family loves mushrooms.  So I also read in Clara's Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories and Recipes from the Great Depression that sometimes her mom would use some of the bread dough on "bread making day" to make pizza.  Then Monday as the kids and I were in the middle of our own "bread making day" it all came together.  I had some of the wonderful fresh sautéed tomato sauce from making Huevos Rancheros, I added to that 5 or 6 sun dried tomatoes and one can of stewed tomatoes and it was AMAZING.  I rolled out some of the bread dough, put my AMAZING pizza sauce on it, topped that with the Portabella Pepper Steak and Mexican cheese.  I served it with sautéed collard greens from the garden.  What a gourmet dinner! 

But that wasn't the end of the portabella mushrooms.  I was able to get a huge package for less than $5, so I still had 6 left AND I had some of the Portabella Pepper Steak left AND I still had some of the AMAZING pizza sauce.  I placed the portabella mushrooms in the oven topped with olive oil and salt, while I added another bell pepper and onion to my "pepper steak" mixture along with the mushroom stems and let that sautee.  After about 5 minutes I pulled them out and topped them with the "pepper steak", pizza sauce and mexican cheese.  Then they went back in the oven until then were done.  So delicious.  I served it with Spicy Curried Beans.  

Hope you're having a great week too!  :)

Green Grass in a Dry Land

As I stepped outside our house and surveyed our town, "They are going to think we are crazy," is exactly what came to mind.  Our neighborhood is called Buena Vista or Beautiful View, it should just be called Vista, because for this Arkansas girl raised in some of the most beautiful scenery on God's green earth it is just a dusty dry view of the town.  A nice place to look over when you are praying, but the words beautiful never come to mind.  Several of the church folks mentioned that the winds come in Jan and Feb.  OK, I thought, what does that even mean - the winds come?  I didn't give it much thought.

On our drive to Oaxaca Haden got this picnic idea in his head.  He wanted to stop right where we were and have a picnic.  I think he just wanted the 12 hour drive to stop, poor guy.  Anyway, I assured him we would have a picnic when we got back home, with the kids.  He agreed a picnic with his brothers and sisters would be funner.  So, we've had several backyard picnics, but Haden really wanted a picnic at the park.  His birthday was in a day or two, so I said, "We can't have a picnic at the park today, but how about for your birthday."  His eyes lit up and he immediately got pictures of a park and nice green grass in his head.  Folks, it hasn't rained in months and when it did rain it wasn't a very plentiful rainy season.  I thought, we'll worry about the grass later, maybe the cake and festivities will be enough.

Wednesday came and we began to make picnic party preparations.  As I baked the caked I noticed there was quite a bit of wind, when we went to the market for a few things the vendors were starting to have a hard time keeping everything from blowing away.  By the time I had everything packed for a picnic and began loading the van, I thought, "They are going to think we are crazy having a picnic in this wind, and they are going to be right."  Not only was there no green grass anywhere in sight, the dust from the months of dryness was blowing everywhere.  Sam just smiled and said, our little five year old wants a picnic, lets go to the park.

We hadn't been to this particular park for a while, so I was very surprised to see they water it year round.  Maybe that's what they use that small entrance fee for.  There was a huge lawn of green grass, which really cut down on the swirling dust and made a very nice place to sit upon a blanket.  The wind had even died down and was hardly blowing by the time we left.  Another family had come and were having their own picnic, so we weren't the only crazy ones.  What a lovely little picnic party God provided for our little guy.  He of course, never even notice the wind and was not the least bit surprised by the green grass, which was just what he expected.

He's showing us which piece he wants, basically the whole head!  LOL!

Isn't this card Lena made him soooo cute!  On the hand is says, "I love you...." and when you open it up it says, "THIS MUCH!"  She got the idea from Pinterest!  LOL!

Cake idea is an alligator from the Family Fun web site.  I don't know if any of you have seen the picture of the super cute cookie monster cupcakes and then the picture of the total fail cookie monster cupcakes, but this kind of made me think of that!  Normally I'm pretty good at birthday cakes, but I got my icing too thin.  Anyway, he's cute and Haden was happy. 

We Won!

Well, somehow we won the war of the leaf-cutting ants.  I have to say, it's bitter sweet.  They were such fascinating, happy, industrious little creatures.  Now the garden seems so still.  Still, I'm thrilled to be harvesting all the beautiful produce.  

Beautiful beets!  This one was juiced with carrots and some wheat grass I also grew.  It made a very sweet juice.

I harvested most of the lettuce that was left.  Some of it was going to seed, since it's starting to get warmer.  This should be enough for our lunch salads for the rest of the week.  We've enjoyed lots of salad from this little patch this winter (along with the ants).  I was a little sad to pull it up, but that's how the cycle works.  I've planted bush beans in their place.

Lots of veggies for broths, stir fries, and salad fixn's

This is cabbage and swiss chard.  The six small squares of swiss chard are doing so well, that I have enough for green smoothies for the whole family about every other day.

The radishes are doing great.

Lena loves eating them right out of the garden.

We planted this smaller variety of carrots.  The ground can be pretty hard, so these little guys don't have to battle the hard ground to grow.

This is the first time I have even planted broccoli.  They have done really well.  We also have leeks, turnips, collard greens, parsley, cilantro, and kale.  

So, there's my winter garden!  I just started some tomato, eggplant, pepper, and lemon grass seeds for the spring summer garden.  The little pods with seeds and all their potential are sitting on my dresser in my bedroom, just days away from sticking their little green sprouts out of the top of the soil.  I'll be able to put tomato plants out in March!  And just think our friends up in Greenland are celebrating because they finally saw the sun for 10 minutes last week!  Happy to be serving God in Mexico.  Happy Gardening ya'll! 

Up-cycling Hubby's Old T-shirt

So, if we are friends on FB you probably already know I've been having issues with my back.  About a year ago I had a herniated disc and it took a good six weeks to recover.  So, with excruciating pain in the same area, I assumed I had re injured a disc again.  Some other missionaries recommended a doctor that had helped her husband with his herniated disc.  While he was doing the examination, I started to realize that I actually wasn't having the same symptoms I had last year.  I didn't have any numbness in my legs or pain when I lifted them.  The doctor assured us that it was not my disc but muscle tension, irritation and inflammation.  This was probably due to lots of hours in the car, coughing and stress.  In short he said I just needed to CHILL OUT.  The whole family has gotten a huge kick out of this and I will not hear the end of it for quite some time.  "Are you OK mom?  Are you getting stressed out?  Don't get stressed mom, I'll get it cleaned up."  You get the point.  Who can blame them, it does seem awfully silly that you can get so stressed out you cause yourself debilitating pain.  In my defense, I thought I was "handling" all the things we have going on fairly well.  If you ask me how I am feeling, the word stressed doesn't really come to mind.  Apparently, I just store all my stress in my lower back.  Anyway, praise the Lord it's not my disc and I will be good as new very soon!  :)

The doctor suggested cotton socks filled with rice and heated in the microwave, so Sam had the idea of making a whole back rice pad out of some of his old t-shirts.  It worked great and I am enjoying it right now as I blog!  

What you need:

2 large t-shirts (100% cotton) turned inside-out

about 5 k dried rice

1/2 cup lavender (optional)

thread (100% cotton)

scissors

Update:  In the comments below Glen writes, " Word of warning.  Use only 100% cotton t-shirt and 100% cotton thread.  Polyester can catch fire in the microwave. "  I haven't actually popped anything in the microwave to test this theory, but a quick internet search does seem to confirm it.  So, be sure a use 100% cotton everything.  

Turn the t-shirts inside out and lay together as shown.

Mark and pin.

Sew around the outer edges.

Trim.

Turn right side in.  I actually forgot to do this and had to rip out some stitches.

Mark every three inches down the length.

Sew along the length, leaving the top open to fill with rice.

This is what it looks like after the lengths are sewn.

Fill each section with rice. 

You can mix lavender in with the rice, so it will smell nice and relaxing once heated.

Thinking.  Cute outfit!

Smelling the lavender.

Then I cut and pinned the top, turning it under.  In hind sight, it might be better to leave the bottom open and fill from the bottom and sew it up last.  Sewing the top closed with the curve and the rice wasn't easy.

And there you have it.  How to make a luxury rice pack for your back.  Just place it in the microwave until it's hot, being careful not to get it too hot.  It even forms around your neck and back!  It will possibly stop a bullet!  LOL!