4th of July

Well all the Peace Corps volunteers went to a regional town for a big pig fest. Otherwise I was planning on putting on a big shindig here. Luckily that didn't pan out since I was sick with something last week. I barely had the time and energy to put a small gig on for the 4th.

But let me tell you about these beautiful fluffy buns I made the other night. For me, they were the highlight of the whole experience. Big, fat hamburger buns! Hooray. My baby bread puffed up so well and nice. I loved him.

and I made the ubiquitous potato salad (yaaawwwn) and Brook made a daikon/cole slaw. The vegetarian intern came over with some hummus and some deviled eggs; and I made a lemon meringue pie and some cookie dough ice-cream for dessert. Of course there were 1/2 pound cheeseburgers on the grill too, Please! the most important part. Outside of my baby buns. I had to make the burgers huge to compete with my monster buns. There is absolutely no fat on the meat here so we succeed at having 100% lean hamburgers. The bad side about this is the hamburger tends to crumble... there is nothing to hold it together! I usually have to use eggs as a binder.

John, Brook's boss came over too so we spent the day munching on Pringles and the vegetarian's hummus and drinking white wine. I supplemented my diet with about 1/4 of the recipe of cookie dough for my ice-cream. Mind you I still managed to pack down my big cheeseburger when the the time came.

My meringue started to collaspe over time and I realized this morning why. There were photo inserts that fell in the middle of the meringue recipe which I didn' see until this morning. I thought i had read through the entire recipe. Whoops. Well at least now I have an explaination as to why it fell. Brook says the taste is really good, being a flat or puffy pie face.... still I am disappointed that my meringue got all weepy. Oh well.

I have just completed a huge saga (oh yes, yet another one) with Senelec, the electric company, which I will share with you shortly. Here are some happy snappies of our recent trip to bangkok and rome.