I definitely feel this where I live now and in other places where I've lived in the US (although biking to work is acceptable here, even if walking 5 kilometers to work would not be). There is unquestionably social stigma attached to walking to get things done versus walking to exercise.

I run all my errands on foot and we chose to rent in this neighborhood because it's possible for me to do that. I don't track my steps or how far I walk every day. I walk to all my medical stuff (including specialists), several different grocery stores, the local mosque to help with their food bank, the library, our church (although we'll drive there if someone in our neighborhood needs a ride), the farmer's market, several book stores, historical sites, and lots more. I walk to the metro station about a kilometer from my house when I need to go further away, like to the ESL classes I teach. In my experience, I'm much happier when I walk often, but we have to be intentional about making it possible because the US is generally designed around people driving rather than walking. I exercise at home, so my walking is about environmental awareness and my mental health. Dh and ds prefer to bike and they bike almost everywhere.

I'm so very sorry.

I’m so sorry. מן השמים תנוחמו

שבת שלום

I rinse my rice and then do about a 1:1.25 ratio, so it ends up with a little more water than that because of the rinsing. I cook it on high pressure for 15 minutes and do a natural release for 10, then open the pot and serve.

Tonight I made a Burmese fish recipe that I haven't made in a long time. It's really easy- you just quickly poach some fish in a broth of salt and turmeric, then you flake the fish and cook it with a flavor paste made of ginger, garlic, shallots, and lemongrass. Add a little fish sauce, turmeric, and lime juice and you're done. I served it with a shallot-cabbage salad and brown jasmine rice. For my sweet thing, I experimented with a layered phyllo dessert that used walnuts and tahini. There's no recipe because it really was just an experiment, but it was good.

I haven’t used a dryer in 18 years and I rarely have been able to dry outside in a lot of different housing types and climates. I have drying racks inside. Even during Seattle winters, the clothes dry, although I use a fan if the weather isn’t helping much. In my current apartment, the condo association bans clothes drying on the balcony so I set up the racks in the bedroom. The best place to dry laundry is a rooftop in the summer in Saudi Arabia, as long as there isn’t a dust storm. It’s quicker than a dryer.

Now that I'm thinking about it, the house where the washing machine was in the bathroom wouldn't have been able to have the washing machine in the kitchen because the kitchen was in a completely separate building and had zero plumbing. The bathroom was in a repurposed room that had a toilet, the washing machine, the furnace, and a shower head in the corner of the room. It had recently been remodeled and plumbing installed for the first time.

We've had washing machines in the kitchen and in the bathroom in various countries. Right now we have a portable washer that I couldn't get to attach to the kitchen sink, so I have to use it in our only bathroom which can be inconvenient. I personally think that Americans place an unusually high value on laundry convenience that isn't the norm in most of the world.

Actually, what we need to do is move. 😄 The last one was so completely perfect and I don't want logistics to ruin this one. It's actually been bothering me for several years now that this one is going to be a lot more complicated.

I know we need to plan, but our lives never work out very well for planning. For the last one, I happened to be in the US at the right time and it was just a few hours drive through some pretty isolated areas to get there. We should be in the US for the next one, but the Eastern US is so much more crowded, plus we're six hours away from the nearest point of totality. We need to plan something.

The börek was just about perfect. I’m so happy. I used this recipe as a basic guide, but I did it on a jelly roll pan with four different fillings. I’m so glad that it’s easy for me to get yufka right now because it works better for börek than phyllo.

Maybe I'll try one of my fish recipes that I haven't made in a while. I get into a rut when I prepare fish, but I have some recipes that are worth going back to. Still thinking about the sweet thing. But tonight, I'm finally making the layered dish that I planned to do two weeks ago. I'm a little slow.

I missed this before so thanks for bumping it.

I love A Town Like Alice. I’ve reread it so many times, although probably not for at least ten years.

I finished Palace Walk/Bayn Al-Qasrayn and loved every second in Cairo. I’ve spent so much time in the neighborhood where the story is set. The characters I didn’t like before, I still don’t like, but they’re not meant to be likable. I’ll get to the other two books in the series after there’s a break in books coming in on hold. I didn’t like the voices the reader did though, and I’m getting tired of audiobooks translated from Arabic whose readers obviously don’t speak Arabic. I’d like to listen to this in Arabic but it’s written in formal Arabic, and I’m more comfortable with regular spoken Arabic. But I also just finished a book that has to go on my top five of all time list (not that I have an actual list like that, and it would probably have more than five books on it anyway), but All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake is truly one of the best books ever and I will be recommending it often. Just go read it.

My photo isn’t great so I’m not going to post it, but on Thursday we grilled store-bought blue corn tortillas over a flame for a few seconds, then topped them with traditional carnitas, rajas con crema, salsa verde, salsa roja, and queso fundido. Since we lived in Guadalajara for a couple of years, I’m counting this for both the regional and layered challenge. I’m going to make borek too, but it won’t happen till tomorrow.

Thanks for continuing to post updates. Still hoping against hope they can get the paperwork sorted out quickly, but at least they're someplace relatively safer for now.

I'm so sorry. Hoping they can find a way to complete the medical records and then get out without anymore problems with paperwork.

I'm so sorry. I'll be thinking of you and your family often over the next few days.

It's an escape/anxiety-reducer for her, so we mostly read fantasy series we both loved. We started doing it in the early days of corona when we couldn't be together. We did Harry Potter first and Jonathan Stroud's books (the second book in his new series finally comes out today!) and other fantasy too.

I’ve been forgetting to post for a while, so here’s a catch up list from the last month, not including books I read out loud to my daughter (yes, we still do read alouds even though she’s applying for law school right now) or for school or rereads. Raven Boys- I liked this, but not enough to continue the series Carry- Loved this. It’s by Toni Jensen and I think it would be a good book group read. Get Well Soon- Interesting, but very western oriented. Inheritance of Orquídea Divina- This really does feel like Encanto for adults. I definitely liked it. Island of the Lost- Book group read. It was good. But it finally helped me sort out my reasoning about why I don’t like popular history overall, even though I generally a lot of popular history. The Humans- This is by the author of the Midnight Library. I found people’s reactions to the main character implausible, but I still enjoyed it. But like the Midnight Library, which I also liked, it felt too much like it was trying to Say Something. I’m listening to Palace Walk (Bayn al-Qasrayn) now which is technically a reread, but I haven’t read the series since the 90s and I’m loving that I can wander through Cairo again.

Your kofta link isn’t going to the right place. I miss eating arugula all the time. It’s so expensive in the US and we live in an apartment right now.

I have some yufka in the fridge that needs to be turned into something layered, even if it's just with cheese. Or maybe I'll try something sweet with tahini? I'm not very attached to my current region though, so I'm feeling unmotivated about making something regional. I'm thinking about seeing if I can find a good food history connection. Or maybe I'll make something from the place we just moved from.