Amanda Takes Off...

I've been in the mood for Mexican food for a couple days. Mexican food here is expensive, and I had two cans of green chili enchilada sauce that Michael gave me before he left, as well as a pack of ten big flour burritos that I probably bought in August at one of the Western markets.

Yesterday I met Good Man at the subway station, where there is a Kim's Club. We bought so much food. I sort of went crazy because I found Bull's Eye barbecue sauce, maraschino cherries, and some sort of four pepper blend—with a built in pepper mill! Pepper here is so finely ground, it's practically tasteless. I was so excited at the idea of real peppercorns. Good Man didn't get it at first, but I ground some fresh pepper into the palm of his hand and he could smell the great pepper scent.

I was so excited.

Maraschino cherries, Jell-O, and marshmallows are similar foods in that they are foods I would rarely eat at home but when I crave them, I hate how hard they are to get here. So I bought maraschino cherries.

For last night's dinner, while Good Man did a huge stack of dishes, I cut five chicken breasts into strips and cooked them on the stove. I took out half of the breast strips and put them aside. While the chicken was cooking, I chopped up red and yellow bell peppers, onion, green onions, red peppers, and garlic. I set aside some of each vegetable and cooked the rest with the chicken. After a few minutes I then added one cubed package of cream cheese and cooked it until it was melted. I tossed on a little habanero hot sauce. Then I stuffed six burritos with the mixture, tossed a can of green chili enchilada sauce and some shredded mon-jack cheese on it and baked it for 30 mins at 350 F.

Then I threw some salt and pepper on the left over chicken. I arranged the raw veggies all nice and pretty on a plate and warmed the remaining burrito shells by tossing them in a stack, between foil, on top of my mini convection oven. I figured it would warm them without overcooking them and it worked. In the meantime, I had used my rice cooker for the first time (yes, I've lived here more than seven months and this was my first time using the rice cooker) to make rice, and I'd thrown some saffron threads in it (totally new to Good Man). I threw the rice in a bowl and some cheese in another bowl and salsa in another.

So we sat on the floor and ate a delicious meal. That we also ate today. And that we'll eat tomorrow. Yes, this meal was so good I had to write about it.

One of the nice things was getting to chat with Good Man while he was washing and I was cooking. It was casual, unimportant talk, but nice nonetheless.

Good Man read another fairy tale with me, this one about why monkeys have red butts. I asked about one of the words I couldn't remember. "무겁다...무겁다...what does that mean? Dark?"

"Heavy."

"Oh yeah. Moo-geop-da. When I did know that word, I thought of a cow. 'Moooooo....' Cause a cow is heavy." Good Man looked at me and broke into a fit of giggles. I went on, "What is 'light'?"

"가볍다." Gabeopda.