Spotted: Cows on My Street

Here in Praia, all kinds of animals live the big city life.  On the streets of the most populous city in the country you see goats, cows, pigs, chickens, and of course, dogs.   Unfortunately, I never seem to have my camera when the animals are in the funniest spots (for example, walking in the middle of the main road, blocking all traffic).  Well this time cows showed up right on my street and I happened to have my camera in my bag when I saw them, thanks to my husband who started stowing my camera in my bag so I would be prepared for Kodak moments.  Here they are: spotted cows on my street.

This is down the street from my house.  See him?  A little cow chewing on weeds.

And look!  There are some of his friend across the street.

Cutie.

Another one wanted in on the action, too.

So there are some bona fide Praia street cows for your viewing pleasure.

Alas, I will be parting from the street cows for some time because on Friday night I leave Cape Verde for about four months.  During that time I'll be in St. Pete waiting for our baby to arrive, and then hanging out with her in the US for her first couple of months to make sure she's good to go back to Cape Verde.  Tom will be in St. Pete early June through mid July for her birth and first few weeks.   We'll keep you all updated!

The Great Cake Weekend of 2012

A few weeks ago a friend asked me to make a cake for the Embassy Easter party, and I also volunteered to make a cake for a friend's daughter's birthday party.  The Easter cake was to be pretty straight forward - vanilla layers with a fruit filling and vanilla icing.  The kid party was pirate themed, so I wanted to make a special pirate type of cake.

For both cakes, I used Martha Stewart's White Layer Cake recipe.  I tried another recipe before that, but it tasted like cornbread to me.  No idea why, considering the recipes use basically the same ingredients.  The noteworthy thing about Martha's recipe is that it has you whip egg whites into stiff peaks and fold them into the batter.  It's a perfectly moist and delicious white cake.

For the frosting, I used this recipe.  It makes a nice, light frosting that's not too terribly sweet.

Here is the Easter cake (blackberry preserves between the layers):

Delicate layer cakes + cobblestone roads = 10 minutes of driving terror.

The kid cake for the pirate party needed to be super fun, so I added sprinkles to make it a funfetti cake.  I also shaped it into a pirate ship.  It was much easier than it sounds, trust me.  It's just two round cake layers cut in half and stacked together with the bottoms shaved off so it doens't roll.  The frosting is the glue that holds it all together.  It's the same recipe as the Easter cake frosting, but I added cocoa powder to make it chocolate.  In hindsight I should have used a stiffer frosting to hold all of the decorations in place.  It was a little hot and the light frosting got sort of melty. 

And here she is, cake and frosting completed; decorations being added:

Here is the cake fully assembled, with sails and candle cannons.  My friend made the amazing sails.  The pirate theme continued with, among other things, orange boats resting on cups of blue jello.

Both parties were great.  Both cakes were eaten.  Both me and baby are now taking a break from sugar for a while.  Parabéns to the new 4 year old, and feliz Páscoa to all.

A bunny?

I'd like to share a recent conversation between Emily and I:

Emily: Let's get a bunny. It will be good for the baby and, when we leave Cape Verde, we can give it back to the bunny farm where we bought it.
Tom: Sounds great! The farmer will appreciate us fattening up the bunny for him.
Emily: *looks horrified* What?
Tom: What did you think happens to all those bunnies on the bunny farm?
Emily: *assertive* There is a need for highly trained magicians' bunnies in this world.
Tom: So, one of Cape Verde's exports is rabbits for magicians?
Emily: *silent pause* Well...I will plant the seed of this idea into the mind of Cape Verdean bunny farmers like in Inception.

A future export market for Cape Verde?

Pregnancy Pictures for You

Hi friends and family.

Yep, still pregnant.  Things are going great so far.  I am at the start of the third trimester and scheduled to head back to St. Pete in about three weeks to wait it out for the baby's birthday in June.  I'm trying to make the most of my time here, sans baby, so I've been doing all kinds of non-baby activities, like sleeping in past 9am, spending afternoons leisurely testing white cake recipes, sipping iced tea in silence while I take a break from reading books, etc.  I'm also finishing up my time as "Profesora" of English at the English Language Institute here in Praia.  Teaching English to adults has been really fun.  I love designing "games" for the students to do that entertain me.  In one of my classes the students are extremely competitive, which makes the class so awesome (for me...I think the students get a little too stressed out).  Anyway, I thought some of you might be interested to see what I look like now.  I haven't been very good about taking pictures on a regular basis, but here are a few from 14 weeks (3.5 months pregnant) to now (27 weeks, or almost 7 months pregnant).  Enjoy!

13 and 1/2 weeks

18 weeks

22 and 1/2 weeks

27 weeks.  

In this photo, Tom is doing a ridiculous French photographer impersonation.  "Don' tell me wha' to do.  I create zee art!" 

There you have it, folks.  Next week I'll probably be double my current size because this week was cake testing week, and next week is cake making week.  I have orders for an easter cake and a pirate ship birthday cake next weekend.  Obviously this involves a lot of testing, and tasting, and re-tasting.  Seriously...I have a layer of funfetti cake and a half layer of pristine, perfect white cake in my fridge just sitting there.  Anyone want to come over this weekend for cake?

My Favorite Restaurant

There are some nice places to eat in Praia.  And then there is this.

This is my favorite restaurant in Praia.  It is a Chinese restaurant.  No sign, dirty, highly questionable, but so delicious.  You might be surprised to learn this, but Cape Verde is home to a significant population of Chinese people.  

Inside, there are four plastic tables with plastic stools to sit on.  The Chinese lady yells at you in incomprehensible Criolu as she's cooking.  I just say what I want, and hope she was telling me to place my order.  Other Chinese patrons yell at each other, too, but I can't tell if they're speaking Chinese or Criolu because the accent is so thick.  Flies buzz around.

I always get the same thing: fried noodles.  This time we split a Coke as an extra treat.  She must use MSG in the food because it is really freaking delicious, and I do not know why exactly.  And certainly in the land of tuna (including tuna on pizza), this is a nice change.

 Here's a better shot of inside.  In the back where the shelves are is the cooking counter.  Where the man is sitting is the first table.  This is the whole restaurant.  There is no more, except maybe some storage behind the cooking area.  It's the definition of "hole in the wall."

And that is my favorite restaurant in Praia.  The end.

Fogo, the Volcano Island

Back in late November, we took a trip to Fogo with Alison and Andrea, who were visiting us for Thanksgiving.  Although each of the Cape Verde islands is volcanic in origin, Fogo is the only island that is host to a currently active volcano.  Of course the main thing to do when in Fogo is hike to the top of the volcano.  But first things first...we checked into our hotel.

We stayed at the Colonial Guest House in Fogo, and it was the nicest place we've stayed in all of Cape Verde.  Here is a shot from our room looking out onto the second floor pool.

This is inside our room.

Ok, here we are approaching the volcano.  In the foreground is an abode in Cha das Caldeiras, the small village next to the volcano.  The volcano actually lies within a larger crater area, as does the village.

The people who live here are striking.  They have blonde curly hair and blue eyes, with cafe au lait skin.  I didn't get any photos of them, but here is more of the village.

Here you can see that we are inside a larger crater.  There are mini volcanic peaks scattered inside the large crater, including of course the large volcanic peak that we hiked.

Here are Alison and Andrea on our hike.  This is a good shot of the black ash.

In no time we were well above the clouds.

Here we are, me about 11 weeks pregnant and hiking a volcano.  We're already taking our baby fun places.

This is Andrea with our guide.

Alison, climbing up the "trail." 

Ok, we made it!  It took us 2 and 1/2 hours, which we hear is good time.  It was freezing cold at the top.  Oh, and do you love our matching socks?  Us girls got them for the hike.

We took a few minutes to just enjoy the view.

This is looking into the volcano.  You can sort of make out the smoke and steam billowing out of the vent in the bottom right.

This is a photo of someone (can't remember who) "hiking" down the volcano.  The going down part was like skiing on sand for about 40 minutes.  I can't say it was my favorite thing, but everyone else really enjoyed it and I lived to tell you about it.

And that was our trip to Fogo.  We also hiked inside a cave (using solar powered lawn lamps as our light....thought we would die), tasted some wine (well, not me), and took a long walk on a black sand beach at night to get to a restaurant that served us plate after plate of raw tuna.  It was a great trip!  Hiking the volcano was fantastic, and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in a vigorous hike.

Something occurred to me

So Emily is in the States getting pictures taken of her uterus and the baby growing inside of it. Since I'm home alone now I have a lot of time to think (i.e. watch TV). And I don't know if you've noticed this lately but there has been an explosion of cop shows based in New York City. Apparently the whole country is obsessed with crime in Gotham. Multiple times a week people from all across the fruited plain (and indeed the world) tune in to watch people get murdered, raped, robbed, stabbed and otherwise brutalized in the five boroughs. Because of this, most of the country probably thinks that NYC is a lawless wasteland with bodies piling up in the morgues. But, as a New Yorker, I knew this couldn't be true.  New York is dirty, over-taxed, and full of delicious carbohydrates but a murder capital it is not. So I asked, is it possible that more people are murdered in Manhattan on television than are actually murdered in real life?

Five television shows compose my data set: Castle, CSI:NY, Blue Bloods, Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law & Order: SVU. All five shows center on police officers attempting to solve brutal crimes committed in New York City. To be more precise, most of the episodes involve a murder committed in Manhattan. In a cursory examination of the plot summaries (and from my own primary research - I just can't get enough of Captain Mal Reynolds, er, I mean Rick Castle) I discovered that at least 30 fictional people were murdered in Manhattan in 2011 in those five shows.

So how many real life homicides actually occurred in Manhattan in 2011?     

Only 27.

So there you have it, more people are murdered on TV in Manhattan than are actually murdered in real life. I'll be expecting my check from the NYC tourism bureau any day now.