Food

I haven't brought up the topic of food and cooking very much. As you all know, I prefer to cook and bake from scratch as much as possible. What's frustrating here is that specific ingredients are hard to come by (for example, graham crackers) and also that (in my opinion) the kitchen is woefully under stocked (in terms of utensils, bake-ware, etc).

To overcome this, I generally have had to make really simple dishes. Lots of pasta with simple vegetable sauces, and little tortilla shells with beans, cheese, and salsa (of which there's about a million varieties at the store). My baking has mainly consisted of chocolate-chip cookies; the flour and butter is so different that I hesitate to make a cake or pie.

The opportunity arose last weekend to show off my baking talents when another Canadian couple decided to host a belated Thanksgiving at their place. I opted to make 2 desserts, one of which had to have pumpkin. After much internet searching and careful consideration of what implements were housed in the kitchen, I found the two recipes: Pumpkin Cheesecake Crumble Squares and Turtle Bars. Both are fantastic and I highly recommend them both. Because if I can make them under duress here in Mexico, you can definitely make them in Canada. Enjoy!

The Month I did not sleep

Good Evening folks,

Well it seems entirely impossible that it has been a month since my last post. It seems as if I spend most of my posts apologizing for their infrequency. Thank goodness for the industry of my beautiful wife to keep you all updated. In any case, as you may surmise, I have been very busy the past few weeks just treading water with this whole teaching thing. My main source of time consumption is that any assignment I give, I have to mark 140 times. Now this isn't much when it comes to multiple choice quizzes, but when it comes to 3 - 4 page short stories, I find myself trapped in a purgatory of sentence fragments and misplaced prepositions (probably not unlike the present composition).

We have still managed to find time for some recreation; namely the soccer game, which was incredible for a variety of reasons. And while I do wish to keep this blog family friendly, I defy any of you to find a sporting venue in Canada or the U.S. where they serve beer in cups the size of a McDonald's Value meal me for less than $3 USD. Now you know the reason for all the riots, at least in Mexico.

We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend (a bit late) with some of our friends from the school, and were able to show/provide them, to the best of our abilities, a traditional Thanksgiving meal. Caroline's pumpkin cheese cake squares were a big hit. I was lucky to have sampled some at home because they disappeared quickly at the dinner. Our outings have been a bit less frequent this month, mostly due to school work; but we still managed to get to the theatre for both "Jennifer's Body" (mildly amusing) and "Inglorious Bastards" (entirely indecipherable since the subtitles were Spanish and the audio was mostly French and German) :(

This weekend I will be attending my first simulated UN gathering at one of the local high schools, so I can finally see my UN club kids in action. Beyond that, Caroline and I are getting very excited about our upcoming Christmas vacation (8 weeks !) Caroline has been in a planning frenzy, and I'm sure each day will general far more interesting blog banter than my humdrum marking stories. We are also still planning to march the Sierra Madre sometime in the New Year. Every day feels slightly more like autumn here, but really it is more rainy than cool (still Tshirt weather). Well, I think I will sign off now and catch a few hours rest. Thanks to all those loyal readers who have to wait far too long between rants. My next planned introspective on what I just don't happen to like about Mexican culture should be interesting, and possibly offensive! Stay Tuned!

Buenos Noches

The Flags

Two orders of business today:
1. Now that the camera is working again, I can post the pictures of the giant flags that I saw on the Mexican Independence Day. This hill with the flag towers over the city, as you will see. Enjoy:

The gargantuan flag, as we approach uphill on foot:





Walkway with flags (and no, that is not some kind of pirate flag, although I don't know what it is):



More flags at the top:



View from the top: San Pedro (the 'rich' area that we live in) is on the other side of the hill:



View from the top of Monterrey:



2. I have not been giving proper props to the readers. Thus:

• Grant: how's law school?
• Fender: how's Hydro?
• Coreas: ¿cómo está el ejército?
• Cheryl: keep working on your German.
  
• Adrea: quit one of your jobs already...
  
• Crawford friends back home: thanks for reading.
• Family members, both sides: thank you for taking care of our stuff while we're gone.

We miss the 'Peg and the action on Victor St as well as the cooler weather (right now, at 10:30pm, the weather stats are: 28 degrees, feels like 32, and the humidity is 79%). Believe it or not, we miss the cold.