Lamb & Eggplant March 31, 2013

Since lamb seems somewhat traditional with Easter, I bought half a pound of ground lamb when I was at the store on Friday. (The lamb chops were pricey and small.)  I didn’t really know what to do with it, but I figured if I didn’t get any inspiration, I could always crumble it with some sort of sauce and eat it with rice or pasta.  At the local shops today I bought some eggplant, figuring both lamb and eggplant are middle-eastern.  Then at dinner time I fired up the AllRecipes app on my phone, did a little Googling on the laptop, and came up with this:

Starting with olive oil and minced garlic, I browned the lamb, then added the spices from AllRecipes’ Grilled Spicy Lamb Burgers (minus most of the cumin and red pepper flakes) and a chopped up eggplant.  A couple minutes later I dumped in a guesstimate of the liquids from the burger recipe, a can of chopped tomatoes, and the vestiges of a long onion for color.  I let it all simmer covered for a while and then uncovered to thicken.  Meanwhile one Metro pita from the freezer got thawed out in the toaster oven while I dealt with a partially-peeled pineapple for dessert.  Hurrah, a yummy dinner, and I have enough of the main dish left to fill the other two pitas in the freezer tomorrow or the next day

Make the Bread February 19, 2013

It’s another bread-making day today.  Why?  Because I wanted to try a new lasagna recipe.

Train of thought yesterday evening: Oh, I will need ricotta for lasagna.  I guess.  It was the main reason I didn’t like lasagna as a child, the texture grossed me out, but… yeah, I’ve made my peace with ricotta now after having it on fresh bread and toast so often.  OK, ricotta it is.

That means I will have the perfect amount of warm whey for some bread or bagels!  But I REALLY don’t have time to make bagels tomorrow.  Ooh, good thing I finished up the bread for breakfast this morning then!  I’ll make some fresh bread.

So, this morning I made ricotta & let it drain, then made bread dough with the whey and set it under the radiator to rise, then used half of the ricotta for a half-recipe of zucchini lasagna (I’m not fully convinced I’ll like it better there than spread on the bread, so I couldn’t bear to use it all in one go).  The lasagna is now covered with foil and waiting till 5-ish to go in the oven, the dough is still rising, and I’m taking a break!

A break means time to type up recipes!  The bread didn’t rise enough the first time I made it (just one loaf’s worth thankfully).  I think the problem was that it called for room-temp water and my kitchen is way too cold.  Since that first loaf I’ve wised up and used warm liquid like I do any other time I make bread, specifically the whey from ricotta, topped off with a little water if needed.  It got rave reviews when I made it last weekend, and I’m going to be sharing some of today’s batch as well – the whole reason bread recipes make 2 loaves is because you eat 1 loaf the first day when it’s still warm/fresh and then eat the other loaf slowly over the next week, isn’t it?

Ricotta

from Smitten Kitchen, though I looked at the below book this time too because I ran out of lemon juice last time I made this and haven’t been able to find a bottle since then

Pour a 1 liter box of milk into a heavy saucepan.  Sprinkle in about 1/2 – 1 tsp sea salt (or table salt?)  Glop in somewhere between 1/2 and 1 cup of heavy cream (if you have it. If not, it’s OK.)

Heat the milk, stirring constantly (or at least almost constantly) until it’s almost boiling.  This time I was looking really closely during short stirring breaks to try and get it just right, and I noticed the surface moving a bit though bubbles weren’t breaking the surface, so I figured that was a good place to stop.

Take the pot off the heat and pour in ONE of these acids:

6 Tablespoons white vinegar OR 3 Tablespoons lemon juice.

Give it a couple gentle stirs, and leave it to sit for 5 minutes.

Line a colander with some cheesecloth (I use a triple-layered cheesecloth, ie a longer piece that I fold twice) and put it in a bowl to catch the whey.  Check that the milk mixture looks curdled, and pour it into the cheesecloth-colander-bowl stack to drain.  (If it isn’t curdled, as happened to me once, I’m not sure what to do – maybe add more acid and see if it helps, or maybe shrug, pour it in anyway, and use what manages not to flow through as sour cream or something.)

After a short time you can pour out the whey to use for bread – by the time it’s cool enough not to kill the yeast, it will be almost finished draining.  Leave the ricotta longer to drain more if you like it really thick, but you can go ahead and use the bulk of the whey while it sits.

EverydayBread

adapted from Make the Bread, Buy the Butter

In a large bowl, sprinkle 1 Tablespoon yeast over 3 1/2 cups warm whey or warm water.  Let sit for 5 min or so.  While it sits, grease 2 loaf pans.

Add the dry ingredients:

1/4 cup ground flaxseed (optional, but why wouldn’t you use it?)
7 1/4 cups of flours*
4 teaspoons kosher salt (or about 2 tsp table salt)

(* My flour mix is different each time; this time it was: 1/2 cup wheat germ, 1 cup graham (whole wheat) flour, 1 3/4 cups bread flour, 4 cups all-purpose flour.)

Mix well.  That’s right, mix, but no kneading needed! Of course, you can knead it if you want to. I tend to stir it for an extra 60 seconds and call it good.  Put half into each loaf pan and spread it more or less evenly.  Cover them with a damp kitchen towel and place somewhere warm to rise until level with the top of the pans (2-5 hours or possibly longer, depending on where you leave it).

Preheat the oven to 450 F.  Sprinkle loaves with a little kosher salt and put into the oven.  Bake for 30 minutes.  Then remove the loaves from the pans, return to the oven, and bake about 15 min longer, until the crust is a nice crusty color and the loaves sound hollow when tapped.  Place on a rack to cool.

Let cool as long as you can stand it, then cut into one and enjoy it spread with nice fresh ricotta and any fruit spread you have on-hand, or melt some butter on it if you didn’t make ricotta!

Rising bread dough – below the radiator, with an old towel draped over it to trap in heat.  My mini loaf pans fit perfectly on top of the radiator and rise like nobody’s business! but the full-sized ones go under it and rise more slowly.

Some things I’ve learned February 12, 2013

It’s the break!  Happy Chun Jie to one and all

As the title says, this post will focus on a few things I’ve learned recently.

Those huge cups you get at the movie theater?  The kind I NEVER buy except just this once because it (and none of the smaller ones) had The Hobbit on it?  Yeah.  PERFECT for when you get a cold.  Fill that baby up with hot-ish water and you’re good to go for at least an hour.  Just keep the Kleenex box and bathroom close by.  Bonus: Since I kept the lid and heavy-duty straw, my cat doesn’t feel the urge to drink out of it or knock it over to drink off the floor.

I would, as I have always thought, LOVE to go to Europe.  Mostly Western but I wouldn’t mind seeing the whole place if I had the resources!  (As I teach my kids, our resources are time, talent, and treasure – thank you, Pastor Eric, for that alliteration!)  Right now all I have is the time and possibly the ability to save the treasure.  I am lousy at planning, though (the talent part of a trip), and while I enjoy learning my way around a place if I have an extended time there, I do not tend to get much sight-seeing done in new cities if dropped into them solo – eg, I have totally wasted a day in both Shanghai and Bangkok.  I have very little experience traveling with friends, but I know enough about myself to know it would have to be a very close friend and our personalities would have to be the right match for traveling together.  So, awesome though going next Chinese New Year would be (PERFECT time to avoid the crowds, no? Everybody else in the Western world is working then!), I think I’ll be waiting till I’m married.  Or possibly working there someday.  Or both.

I might not have as much time to visit Europe from here as other China-based friends.  I’m not sure of anything yet, but it looks like next year’s might be my last Chun Jie (Chinese New Year) while living in China, at least for this season of my life.  For various reasons, I feel like summer 2014 may be the time to move back to the United States for a while.  I am still praying for guidance and confirmation and open doors – I suppose I will be praying for those sort of things all my life if I’m wise – but I found that my heart’s compass shifted during the week after I told the school that I would like to sign just a one-year contract for next year, shifting from “I live in China, maybe I’ll leave soon-ish, ask me again next winter when contracts come up again,” to “I think I will leave China in 18 months unless something changes and I stay.”

I have learned in the last year or two that I need friends who pursue me, because I am not great at keeping up relationships nor do I always trust my ability to read/interpret social cues.  And I’ve realized that I need and want to be more of a pursuer.  Having been blessed by a friend pursuing me, I want to share that blessing with others.  Not just random people off the street, mind you – if I’m pursuing you, it’s because I DO want to spend time with you, know you better, have a deeper relationship in which we can glorify the one who made us to live in community with others.  We have a God who pursues us passionately – I want to be more like Christ in this way!  And if I’m not pursuing you at the moment, it doesn’t mean I DON’T want to be with you, like I said I’m not great at this – ladies, if you want to get to know me better, try pursuing me and see what happens.  If I’m slow on the uptake, spell it out for me even.

And I am so grateful for friends to talk these things over with!  Different kinds of friends, but each such a blessing in my life.  I am going to miss Sara as she’s going to be away the rest of the break – no time for a cup of tea & a chat, or things like that.  I’m glad I can spent time with Stephanie during the days to come, with movies and talking and all.  Maybe I can find a time to Skype with Mom when it’s not too early or late “her time” since my own time will be more flexible during the break.  And so many other wonderful people here and elsewhere… I love and appreciate you!

PS: Oh, and that also means the clock is ticking on traveling within Asia!  Where should I visit?  What MUST I see while I live here?  I’ve come up with a couple ideas of multi-stop itineraries for next Christmas and Chun Jie breaks (domestic and international respectively), but there are still two Spring Breaks to possibly fill!

Various Notes + Birthday February 2, 2013

What started as a “too many thoughts for a simple status update” post turned into a birthday-week run-down.

Listening to the Hobbit soundtrack (thank you, Jordan!) and wondering how I can get “Misty Mountains” as my ringtone. … And wondering if I would ever answer the phone if I managed it, or just listen to it ring until the caller hung up.  Actually, I’d probably want to shuffle “Misty Mountains” with Aragorn’s coronation song which, yes, I have memorized in its original whatever-Tolkien-language-it-is (but am not geek enough to know WHICH language, apparently). If this super-long soundtrack ever ended I’d go listen to that right now, but I’m not interrupting a new album for a song I’ve heard before!

My sweater collar and pushed-back hair one morning made me think of Gary Oldman’s bad guy in “The Fifth Element” so I stopped to snap a photo.  This sort of thing amuses me.  The character was loathsome, mind you, but I like the movie and like Gary Oldman as an actor!

The internet has gotten, hm, more free-flowing?  Less constipated?  Something good.  Recently.  Videos from the US stream at watchable speeds – something they haven’t done in well over a year.  This morning I heard Amy K and Beth talking about the new Lizzie Bennet Diaries video and so I pulled out my phone, plugged in my headphones, and pulled it up – and it PLAYED!  I have NEVER been able to watch an internet video on my phone here before!!!  Even when videos loaded slowly-but-surely on my laptop, the phone used to load about a second per minute and after 5-10 minutes of trying I would give up in disgust.  Now I’d better remember I have only 300 MB 3G service per month… (and too bad it was the first day of the month today; I had over half of last month’s left yesterday!)

Thursday was not only the last day of January, it was the 100th day of school.  Three children brought in 100 of something to celebrate.  Fun

I’ve started knitting a pair of socks with the pretty green yarn Mom gave me last year for my birthday + the needles she gave me this year.  So far I’m 1-for-2 on finished pairs of socks – one finished pair with yarn she gave me quite a few years back, and one very-much unfinished pair with hand-dyed yarn I bought online another year.  I hope this pair follows the trend of Mom-given yarn and gets finished, and quicker than the last pair!

I love to drink a piece of fruit!  Not like with a juicer – just what it feels like when I eat it and it’s very juicy!  Usually it’s apples; this evening it was about 1/3 of a pomelo that I pulled apart last weekend and then kept forgetting because it was hiding under all the birthday leftovers in my fridge.

(all the different yogurt in the bottom is to try as starters to make my own yogurt… once I remember to buy a couple liters of milk! till then it goes on pav.)

Birthday leftovers!  My fridge is still more than half-full, including 2 personal-pan-sized pizzas that Ayi made TUESDAY and I still haven’t baked because there’s been so much else to eat!  I wonder if the yeast is all dead yet?  Well, I’ll bake them tomorrow for lunch at last!

Other leftovers get a little story of their own – the story of a lovely birthday week!  Just before my birthday I started the ball rolling by leaving some regular-food leftovers in the fridge because I tend to suffer from empty-fridge, bored-tummy on weekends, but then I just snacked on my birthday while I cooked my birthday dessert – Pavlova! – so the mundane foods had to take a back-seat as the birthday foods began.

I made a double batch of pavlova (1 regular large circle and 8 small ones) and the thought I’d burned it – it certainly smelled burnt! – so I quickly whipped up another single batch, only to find when I took them out of the oven that in fact they were all wonderfully edible.  I still have 3 single-serving sized meringue bases left, along with some of the second batch of strawberries I had to buy to eat with them all!

my first pavlova

I already had eaten some birthday dessert by then, though – Cindy P made some super carrot cake with frosting to share that morning!  And sent me home with 3 pieces (breakfast, snack, dinner dessert….)

My birthday guests that night made dinner and brought it with them.  Steph T brought yogurt and fruit that went on the pav along with the cream and strawberries I had for it – SO perfect!  That finally reached its end today after sharing it with my class (along with the other full-pav, my “birthday cake” this year).  Carrie made yummy sweet banana-fruit bread like I’ve never tasted before – it’s been snack or breakfast all week and isn’t gone yet!  She also made some of the best chicken in BBQ sauce.  Some of that stuck around with the fun pasta salad Edith brought (eaten up now!)  I’m either forgetting or misattributing something here, I know Sara made something – veg, I think! we must have eaten it all up right away, what a delicious night.

Also filling the fridge: I made applesauce from the small bunch of dinged-up apples in the big 44-lb box of apples I bought, and simmered down a jar of plums I canned with honey syrup and a vanilla bean last summer, and went to Canvas on Monday where I had perhaps the best hamburger I’ve had in China + an appetizer (unusual for me) thanks to a gift card from a student’s parent at Christmas. (I got 3 more for my birthday so apparently I’ll be back.)  Anyway the Canvas meal was so much good food that half the burger made it home to furnish another meal, and I brought home 3 slices of blueberry crisp from another A-mazing chicken dinner last night with the Budensiek family, and oh yeah went upstairs for “brinner” tonight where my homemade sauces were appreciated and I got to eat some yummy breakfast foods before settling down to work on masters stuff.

So yeah, a good food week, and food is important to me so that’s part of what made it a good birthday week, but it was beyond the food or the gifts.  Yeah, I was excited to get a birthday package from my family (thanks, Mom and Dad! thanks, Jordan!), which came perfectly on Monday, right after my birthday.  Even better was calling up Jordan to open it “together.”  It was fun being celebrated at school and at church – they all sang to me Sunday morning, much to my embarrassment as well as enjoyment (oops, just realized I forgot to go up front at Assembly today for my birthday pencil + song in 3 languages!)   Spending time with a family I don’t get to see as much since moving out of the downtown area, talking and stuff and being free to look silly dancing to a song from Lilo & Stitch with their Wii/Disney dancing game.

 

Birthday Party!

And it was really great to have time with dear friends in my apartment on my birthday.  I often feel like an inept party planner, but Carrie taking over the meal planning freed me up to enjoy the time.  I brainstormed ahead of time about what to do and it was kind of random, but it was “me-style” and since it was a small group I didn’t feel so stressed that people would be bored and since it was “my” day I wasn’t too worried they’d wish they were doing something else (yeah, I love to host but I’m not a secure hostess) so it was the right mix.  We talked, including a tradition of Rick’s family of asking the birthday person questions.  We played a goofy lego game I bought in Aus that involves sheering sheep (knitters love fiber, you know!)  We prayed for each other, for the upcoming year.  And my blessed, beloved parents got up extra-early on a Sunday morning US-time to video-Skype and “meet” my friends before everyone here went home to bed.

I don’t think I had the concept of a “birthday week” before I lived here; do you have such a concept in your life?  What was a good birthday or birthday week that you remember?

Make the Bread, Buy the Butter January 19, 2013

I got some awesome books for Christmas!  So far I haven’t started the biography that I was so excited to receive (Goforth of China), but I’ve read three others cover to cover and in this order:

The knitting book (A Second Treasury of Magical Knitting – tragically I don’t have any needles long enough to start a mobius loop project right away!)

The cookbook (see below)

The comic book adaptation of Exodus-Samuel (Manga: Melech, covering post-Red-Sea through David’s death and following on the heels of Manga: Mutiny, my copy of which is missing right when I’m teaching my students about Genesis!)

Yeah, this is me, the woman who not only READS cookbooks and such, but reads them FIRST.

Today I made two recipes from Jenifer Reese’s book, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What you should (and shouldn’t) cook from scratch to save time and money.  We don’t share a personality but she’s a woman after my own heart in the kitchen at least – it seemed like often her verdict was “it’s actually not simple but it’s totally worth making this from scratch.”  And often I would agree with her!  Not that I have time to make most of the things she lists from scratch, but today I threw together a no-knead bread dough she listed as everyday sandwich bread and a batch of her hot chocolate mix.

The oven is right now pre-heating for the bread to go in.  She says it “will rise at its own pace” over 2 to 5 hours; it’s been six and I’m out of patience as it has MAYBE risen a quarter inch.  This loaf’s not going to reach the top as promised!  The mystery is the cause.  Did the freezing temps in my kitchen kill the yeast?  Or was it the almond milk I decided to sub in for 1/3 of the liquid?  Those are my only guesses.  I’ll try it again next time I have whey on-had for the liquid, but I’ll be more traditional and let the yeast proof in warm-ish liquid first rather than dumping everything together cold as the recipe says. (Well, it says “room temperature,” but room temperature in a Chinese kitchen in winter is pretty cold.  But yes I had it in the house to rise, right below the radiator, so it had its chance.)

The cocoa mix performed better. It’s not nearly as good as the gourmet cocoa mix my students’ mothers gave me for my birthday last year and which I saw at the import grocery store for around $15US (the can holds about a dozen servings), but it does taste JUST like Swiss Miss.  So if you’re in love with Swiss Miss, it’s perfect.  If I were in love with Swiss Miss, I would probably try putting my next scraped-out vanilla bean pod to sit in brown rather than white sugar so that this recipe could be made without the need to add vanilla extract when you’re mixing a cup.

One other note I’d make on the recipe is that it’s not quite as easy as she lets on – who on earth would think to mix moist brown sugar into a dry mix and then put it through a sifter?  MY sifter’s holes are too small for sugar or salt to go through, so I mixed the sugar and cocoa powder in the sifter with my fingers to get them well worked together and then dumped them into the bowl and whisked in the salt at the end.  The texture did seem to be OK; time will tell if it dries in clumps or stays powdery.

Oh, and I’m thinking of opening a new bag of marshmallows and chopping them to bits then leaving them on the counter to dry for a week or two – when I got some out of the opened package in the cabinet to put into my drink and bit into one first, I almost broke a tooth!  Perfect Swiss Miss dry-and-flaky marshmallow texture.

Cocoa
from Make the Bread, Buy the Butter

Make it or buy it? Make it.
Hassle: None at all (hah! says I)
Cost comparison: Swiss Miss charges about $0.38 per 1-ounce packet of cocoa (and more here in China, I might add).  One ounce of homemade cocoa costs about $0.18 (though probably also more here in China – all 4 ingredients are actually special purchases in my kitchen, though table salt and a wetter, more clumpy brown sugar are available cheaply as local purchases. The marshmallows, not officially part of the recipe, were the only thing really local in my cup!)

1 1/2 cups dark brown sugar
1 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt

1. Sift the ingredients into a bowl.  (Or work it together with your fingers till smooth.)  If any salt or sugar gets left in the sifter, just pour it into the cocoa mix and whisk to blend.  Keeps indefinitely in a lidded jar.
2. To make hot chocolate, use 2 tablespoons per cup of hot milk.  Stir in 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Makes 2 1/2 cups mix, enough for about 20 cups of cocoa.

Singing Along December 29, 2012

Before Christmas, I was super-excited to take part in the second annual Qingdao Carolers group as an Alto singer.  Last year’s was a good stretching time that I enjoyed.  It has always been hard for me to sing parts other than the melody, though I switched from Soprano (melody) to Alto (harmony) in the Messiah choruses years ago since I just can’t sing that high.  Once I found an Alto-enhanced CD to practice along with for months leading up to the Dec. 23 sing-along, I could show up on the night of the concert with my score, sit with the other altos in the audience, and sing my heart out!  Basically, since I can’t read music except for a general “up/down” gist, I have to memorize the “melody” that my harmony part is singing, even though it doesn’t flow in the musically-logical ways your mind can anticipate like a typical melody.  (The one part of music I CAN read pretty well is the tempo part – more on that later.)  Last year I had two things going for me.  I put in a lot of effort learning my alto “melodies” both during and after rehearsals, and I was sandwiched between two strong altos (who also happen to be our school’s elementary art and elementary band teachers – awesome ladies!)  HEARING the alto part sung strongly around me let me stay where I needed to be, and I was able to sing my part with joy and gusto most of the time, and quickly find it again if I managed to get lost.

This year was much tougher.  We didn’t spend much time going over the individual parts in rehearsals, I didn’t put in much practice time because I was in the middle of an insanely-scheduled grad class on top of teaching full-time AND preparing a couple dozen hand-made Christmas gifts, and my trusty alto-sidekicks weren’t there for the performances I was able to attend.  I wasn’t the only alto, but the others were more the sort of natural singers who can harmonize off the cuff, which meant they sounded great but they weren’t always singing the exact notes on the paper that I had practiced.  I could still sing the alto “melody” by myself in a quiet place or with my hands over my ears, but in the middle of a performance with the other notes around me I would get lost and just have to move my lips for a while till I caught a series of notes I recognized that would let me catch on again.  Sometimes I couldn’t even catch the starting note and would wait in frustration with a fake smile for half a verse or even a whole verse before I could start singing.  I’m still glad I did it, and I’ll do it again, but next time I’ll put in more effort practicing and, if Steph isn’t going to be there, I will know going in that I won’t be able to sing much – though in that case it will still be frustrating because I LOVE to sing, especially Christmas songs and especially in mixed groups, so being there without being able to sing is like (pick your favorite hobby here) holding luxurious yarn in a gorgeous color and a quality far above what is usually available to you but being unable to find any knitting needles.

Now, it’s nice to vent a bit, but the reason I typed up this experience is that the Father used it to gently remind me that it’s oh-so-easy to sing along with those around us when that isn’t what we’re supposed to be singing.  During the caroling, I could just pick up on the melody with the sopranos at any time, no problem (except a few high notes).  But I wanted to sing MY part.  I wanted to sing the part that suited my vocal range best, despite hearing what was for me the “wrong” part, tantalizingly easy just off to one side, and the confusing mixture of the other parts around me keeping me from finding the “right” note.  How often it’s easy to go along with what we see and hear of the lifestyle of those around us.  For example, I was taught growing up that we should spend time in prayer and Bible reading daily.  But I’ve found that since I don’t hear other people talking about their time with the Father (though a few blog about it now and then), I end up feeling like I’m doing well if I just fit in some quiet time now and then.  For all I know, every believer in this city has an hour with the Father each day, but since I almost never hear about it, I feel like I’m try to sing my part without hearing it sung by others.   Same thing goes for talking about what He’s teaching us, showing us, how He’s revealing Himself to us.  I only talk about it with one or two people from time to time, and I feel like if it were more of a general conversational topic among friends, acquaintances, and co-workers in addition to the weather, TV, or food, it would be like hearing my part around me, helping me stay on key and become better at singing “our” part.  This kind of sounds like I’m saying everyone else is responsible for my spiritual state, which while not totally untrue (we DO influence each other and are commanded to build each other up), isn’t really what I’m trying to say.  I am part of the “we” that don’t talk about these things.  Now and then I’ll think of this issue in the middle of a conversation, and try something out – “What has God been teaching you lately?” “What can I pray for you for?” – but really not very often.  What I’m wondering is, how do we change this tune?  And can I, with the Father’s help, get better at singing my part even when I don’t hear it around me?

Happy Thanksgiving! November 13, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!

We just had Thanksgiving dinner together here, since next week many of us will be at a teachers’ conference in Thailand. I was excited to do a small part in helping organize by coordinating what each person at my table would bring, but then after school when I got to the auditorium I wished I was anywhere else for a while. I think it’s just an introvert thing – I’d been dealing with people all day, tried to do some grading, and now I was ready to get back some shreds of emotional energy by being alone. Thankfully the Father let me sit undisturbed for a little while and then the meal started. Higher blood sugar probably helped a little, as well as the much-lower noise level, but what helped the most was hearing people share what they were thankful for in the mic we passed around the tables. An added burden of “what will I say? I feel so un-spir’tual” became joy at hearing others’ blessings and often an agreement of “Me, too!” bubbling up! (Hearing one of my staff-kid students say he was thankful for his teacher didn’t hurt my mood either.)

So here’s the list I finally came up with when the mic made its way back around to me.

I am thankful for my loving, mostly-healthy family back in the States. I’ve been sad for friends here who lost family in recent years and prayed for those who have life-threatening illnesses. Just this weekend I talked with someone who has been loved by my parents and didn’t have a relationship at all like that with her own parents. It makes me so grateful for them, and glad I get to “share” them too!

I am grateful for the amazing gift of J’sus. I’ve been learning to think more truth this year. Just memorizing the first few verses of Ephesians is mind-blowingly encouraging.

I am thankful for the quick healings I have had, first from the flu and then from a twisted foot.

I am thankful to work with people, both local and fellow-foreigners, whose first concern when I’m under the weather is to care for me and assure me that classes are covered, not to gripe that they have to pick up my slack. My appreciation of them goes way beyond this but it’s a good example of how blessed I am to work with them.

I’m also thankful for the community of expats who care for me when I’m in need. I don’t know all of them well, but being an expat and being brothers & sisters in one Family, there is a huge foundation that comes immediately. Relationships still take work, don’t get me wrong, but I know if I needed help I could ask any of these people and they’d do what they could – and that they would ask me too, which is an important part of being part of a community!

And in addition to the caring community, I’m thankful for my cat, who happily greets me when that I come home every night. When I was sick Stella kept me company all night and day and night as I went back and forth to the bathroom to throw up, dozed for hours on end, and finally pulled myself to the kitchen to make applesauce before falling back into bed. Life – single, introverted life – is so wonderfully balanced with a cat in it!

One more thing I’m thankful for: now that Thanksgiving is over, the Christmas season has begun! When you have to mail gifts the first week in December, it’s nice to feel like Christmas is already near and not over a month off while you work on them.

(PS: I forgot to mention it at dinner or in this post, but I’m thankful for my students too!)