Many Hours Later

So, when we arrived at Amman airport in the middle of the night, we found we had a 2 hour delay, because the arriving flight was delayed, right from the get-go. At least we had a comfy seat in a cafe to sit down and keep the kids entertained, and it did make our looooong layover in Frankfurt just a little bit shorter!

We did a lot of plane watching:

Frankfurt also had decent seating available this time… we’ve been through at times where we’ve had to find a quiet corner and camp on the floor, but were able to get to our gate and wait in real chairs. Brian even took a nap. Our travel was smooth, but long. Very long. Fortunately, Lufthansa was, as typical, a very pleasant travel experience. Eventually, we arrived (with luggage!) in Orlando, where it was POURING! Water was coming down by the bucket-load and there was thunder and lightning. It was still hot, but the wet winds was very refreshing after hours breathing stale air… not that we had to go out in to the actual wet stuff. Disney picked us up at the airport and brought us to the resort. It had finished raining before we had to walk over to the building where our room is located. We had a late dinner, and an early night!

This morning we walked over to the main building of the resort and had breakfast. It’s a pretty place.

We planned to keep this day empty and quiet, and it was nice to relax, go swimming, and do a little planning for the rest of the week. Resort guests get extra hours here and there at certain parks on certain days, and we wanted to organize that a bit. We enjoyed the big pool and water slide during the hot part of the day, then decided to go to Downtown Disney for dinner. Brad got to pick, for father’s day. The kids were tickled to be able to ride the water taxi to the Downtown area.

Our home away from home.

It’s so green and refreshing!

Spanish moss swinging in the breeze.

The ferries cruise the canals and stop off at, or pass by, several of Disney World resorts on the way to Downtown Disney. This is one of the villas of the Wilderness Resort.

And finally, we see the white building housing Cirque de Soleil…

and we’re at Downtown Disney, which is infested by sea monsters,

pirates,

and dinosaurs.

It is also home to many shops and restaurants and we wandered until tired and hungry kids needed feeding. Brad chose T-Rex – which is just like the Rainforest Cafe, but with a prehistoric theme – for dinner. It was pretty good and entertaining too. The dinosaurs were nice, but I especially liked the giant aquariums.

After dinner, we did a bit more wandering around, but we were very tired! I think we really needed this day to adjust our inner clocks! Hopefully we’ll be on a US schedule by tomorrow, when we’ll head to a park and get serious about this Disney stuff.

No promises to blog regularly, btw… technically, I’m on vacation :)

Dolmades and Shadow Cats

Shadow cats – just because they’re cute.

Dolmades – just because the produce stand had pretty grape leaves.

Most regions that grow grapes will have a traditional recipe for making stuffed grapes leaves, just as many cultures make stuffed cabbage leaves. Stuffing things into other things and eating them seems to be a human trait… anyway… Locally, we find the grape leaves stuffed with a more rice-heavy filler recipe with an egg/oil/lemon sauce that can be eaten hot or cold. They’re usually listed on menus as ‘Wareq ‘ayneb’, which is, literally, just the grape leaves. Add the word ‘Mahshi’ and that tells you they’re stuffed, but I rarely see it written that way. Brad and I like this dish, but the kids won’t touch it… probably due to the tang of the lemon sauce.

But the produce stand had such pretty leaves… what to do? I was sure Brad and I would enjoy them for dinner, but I don’t believe in making separate adult and kids meals! Then I remembered the dolmades we had on Crete. Those rolls had more meat, and were covered in a tomato sauce. I decided to experiment with that idea and made something that brought about two miracles. One was, my kids willingly and without much complaint, ate odd looking dark green lumps covered in baked on tomato sauce… even after they saw that there was not only onion mixed with the meat, but zucchini too! They said it was ‘not their favorite, but it’s wasn’t bad at all’ … which was a much better response than I thought I’d get from them!! The second miracle was that I made up a tasty recipe that was relatively fast, easy, and did NOT result in the production of +/-500 dolmades. I love the things, really, but how many do you honestly need in a single meal?? Like this recipe (<-link), it looks yummy, but you start with 2lbs of meat plus all the other ingredients! Sure, I know you can scale recipes, but sometimes it messes up the cooking time, esp, with raw rice. Here’s what I did:

Prep the leaves: Wash the leaves. Remove the hard stems. Bring to a boil in lightly salted water. I also added a bit of olive oil… I wasn’t sure if they’d stick together and tear. When the leaves turn from their natural green, to a grey-green-brown, they’re done. It doesn’t take long. Drain the water and cool. I had about 30 leaves. The younger leaves without thick veins are best. You might want to save some of your torn or less pretty leaves to line your casserole dish, but I didn’t have any ugly leaves. I very lightly oiled my glass casserole dish with olive oil and nothing stuck.

Filling: I browned one-half kilo of ground beef with finely diced onion and garlic. I chopped up one tomato, and one finely diced zucchini. I also added salt, pepper, and 3-4 tbsp mint. I’ve had pine nuts in dolmades, more tomatoes, rice (cooked and uncooked – depending on how your recipe works. For my experiment, leftover cooked white rice would have been good.), etc. I’ve also added wine to the sauce, or not. It’s a pretty forgiving dish so I’d suggest browsing the internet for more filling ideas. I sauteed the whole until the veggies were medium soft.

In the meantime, I made a batch of this simple dough (<-link) and set it aside… I didn’t plan on needing it to rise much… which is good because I don’t have much luck with bread here.

Rolling the dolmades: I’m no  pro at this, but basically, put the leaf face down, veins up, with the tip of the leaf away from you. Place a small spoon of filling at the base where the stem would attach. Fold over the bottom flaps, then roll up, folding in the sides like a closed burrito, until you get to the tip. (look online, you can likely find photo instructions or a video). Place in rows in your casserole dish… on a bit of oil or your leftover leaves… with the seam down. Pack them in fairly snug. For the small amount of rolls that I made, I used my smallest rectangle pyrex… about 11x8” and made a single layer of rolls. For larger batches, rolls are often stacked in multiple layers, but you’d have to watch your cook time. Some recipes call for stove top cooking, and placing a heavy plate on top to keep the rolls from unraveling. I bet it would also work nice in a crockpot.


Tomato sauce – I suppose you could search for recipes, use one of your own recipes, use plain tomato sauce, or, do as I did… look in your pantry and see what’s there. I keep a few boxes of tomato sauce for quick meals, and I also had a box of Pomi Marinara Sauce. That sounded good to me! I just poured it over the layer of rolls. I did not cover it. Perhaps if I’d made a larger batch that required longer cooking, covering the dish might be a good idea, at least for part of the time, to keep it from drying out the sauce.

I preheated the oven to 350F, and noticed I was running out of time! I usually try to get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour, but the gas tank ran out – resulting in some running around and phone calls, Honor had computer homework she needed help with, and Brian needed assistance with organizing an oral book report he was to give first thing this morning. Somewhere in the midst of all that, we had to run over to the embassy and pick up Brad. I had the leftover meat filling and bread dough and I had planned on making little 2-3” meat pockets… which the kids love, and I figured it would make up for my putting stuffed grape leaves on their plates as an entree… but I didn’t have time. I simple rolled the whole dough out, long and flat, put the meat in it, and rolled it up in a big long loaf. I placed it on a lightly oiled baking sheet.

I put the casserole dish and the meat bread in the oven at the same time and baked for about 30minutes at 350F. Tadaa! Dinner! I had leftover rice, veggies, and lebnah (strained yogurt) to serve with. There was a little grumbling when the kids sat down to eat… as I said, they know that they do not like the local wareq ‘ayneb, and it’s not just whining, they’ve tried them… and they were expecting the lemon sauce. I told them it was different, these had more meat, etc. and they agreed to try them. They were also happy because I told them that, if they really didn’t like it, they could unwrap the rolls and just eat the filling. I think the meat bread on the side, and homemade ice cream with fresh strawberries dessert, helped too. 

Good Morning – with cats

The alarm rings at 6am – time to hit the snooze a few times. I need my snoozes. Fortunately, the cats understand the significance and vital importance of mom’s snooze time, and rarely bug me. They do know what it means when I grab the phone and turn off the alarm 10-15 minutes later though, and come leaping up on the bed to say their hellos.

We walk down the hall towards the kids’ rooms… I shuffle groggily, they scamper and swirl. I turn on lights, radio, and get each child to acknowledge my presence and purpose for trespass… then I go out to allow them another 10-15 minutes sleep. This snooze ‘alarm’ works very well for them and it’s very easy to get them going when I wake them like this. Often I take advantage of the time and go back to bed for a few more minutes myself. Yes, I do set the alarm again, and amazingly enough, the cats ‘get this’ too, and while they follow me back to bed, they still don’t bug me.

Oh, but soon enough, it’s time to get up, for real, and the cats throttle up the excitement level to the highest notch! Off we parade down the hall again… one shuffling, 3 racing… and I let the cats determine who gets up first. They leap on the chosen bed and snuggle, rub, head-butt and purr. Then we have fun pulling clothes out of the closet (yes, they can balance on the clothes rod), catching (stealing) socks, digging through drawers, etc. Ninja loves the ‘toe attack game’ and considers it her daily duty to pounce on toes as the kids attempt to extricate themselves from the blankets.

“One kid successfully awakened… next!”

Getting dressed, shoes on, teeth brushed and hair brushed are all closely cat supervised. Sometimes too much so. It’s dangerous to brush hair when a cat is trying to grab the brush from your hand. And it’s hard to brush teeth with a cat in the sink wanting to play with the water… despite the distractions though, getting ready with cat help tends to be a lot of fun.

Eventually the kids make it out to the breakfast table. Pumpkin generally leaves everyone alone and has his breakfast, but Pixie believes it is her job to bother the kids, as much as possible, at the table. She is especially interested when milk, or Kiri cheese (cream cheese), is involved, but also loves the effect she can get by diving at the base of a cereal box to knock it across the table, cereal flying! (brat!). Ninja meanwhile, helps me with the kids’ lunchboxes and backpacks. I set the boxes on the counter, go find snacks, remove a toy rat from a lunchbox, start packing the box, go get water bottles, remove the cat from the box, turn around to put everything in backpacks… remove cat and/or rat from backpack, etc.

Finally, we make it out of the door and the kids get out to their bus. Some mornings we can hear Ninja meowing forlornly from the living room as we wait outside. What never fails though is, as I come back in the house, I will hear Ninja calling desperately for me from inside the door. I suppose minutes are like hours in cat-time. She wheelies up, meercat style, on her hind legs for love and pets… then she brings me her toy rat. Rat fetch is the BEST. GAME. EVER., especially with a big long living room and marble floors to slide across. I’ll toss her rat for as long as she brings it back, or until my arm gets tired… usually she gets distracted by her sister joining the game and I can make my escape.

Next on my agenda is making coffee. That routine is very similar to packing lunches… get the pot, remove the cat from the sink. Remove the rat from the sink. Fill the carafe while preventing the cat from playing with the water. Pour the water into the coffee maker and insert a filter. Go get coffee. Stop the cat from placing the rat in the filter, (or coffee tin or whatever is handy), toss rat across kitchen, spoon in coffee grounds, etc. Then, get the rat from the counter, again, remove the cat from my shoulder, go in living room and play round two of rat fetch, the BEST. GAME. EVER. It probably would not surprise anyone that I often forget to turn the maker on… 

Eventually, I sit down for a few minutes to check the news and my email. It’s about this time that Brad comes out, ready to leave for work… and often has to remove at least one fast asleep, worn out cat from his chair so he can sit down and put on his shoes! The cats will often sleep most of the day too, unless I go shopping and bring home exciting groceries (doesn’t matter what I buy.. groceries are always interesting), and they will only wake up when it’s time for the school bus to bring their kids back home again. The cats need all day to rest because homework play, evening play, and bedtime rituals tend to be just as wild as our mornings, with cats.

(btw… I sure hope the grocery store has more furry toy rats back in stock… the ones we have left are about played out!)