the offWhites

This evening, I made my favorite Cheese Soup (see, I love it so much I give it big shiny capital letters). I even managed to find Worcestershire Sauce here, at a regular grocery store — not an import or specialty store. The Cheese Soup was very, very good.

That is all.

Cheese Soup

• 2 T. butter
• 2 T. canola oil
• 1 c. chopped onion
• ¾ c. chopped carrot
• ¾ c. chopped celery
• 2 cans (14.5oz) chicken broth
• ¼ c. flour
• ¾ c. half-and-half or heavy cream
• 3 c. grated cheddar cheese
• ½ t. Worcestershire sauce
• ½ c. beer
• salt and pepper to taste

1. In a medium pot, heat the butter and oil over medium heat. Add the onion, celery and carrot; saute 5 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons broth and cook an additional 5 minutes. (This is where I, in all of my vegetable-avoiding glory, dump it all in the blender and smoosh it all up into a paste. I usually add a little more of the chicken broth to facilitate this.)
2. Stir in the flour and cook 1 minute. (The mixture will be very thick.)
3. Add the remaining broth slowly, stirring to smooth out the flour. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer 15 minutes, stirring often.
4. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the half-and-half, grated cheese, Worcestershire, beer, salt and pepper. Place back on low heat for 5 minutes until the cheese has melted. Hold on low heat.
5. Note: This is a pretty forgiving soup. I often add more cheese than the 3 cups, or more or less beer depending on my mood and who I’m serving. Also, it’s really, really good with beer bread. I’ll share that recipe sometime later. It’s really easy, so I ought to post it so you can all share the goodness…mmm….

Blargh - it’s almost midnight and I still haven’t written (or gone to sleep, which might be the greater problem of the two).  So, it’s a quickie today!

Tomorrow I’m headed to the zoo with my kindy class.  Should be fun.  Or not.

We got our Christmas box today - thanks Mom and Dad!  I went ahead and opened after Mom said she’d wrapped all the stuff that we have to wait to open, and woo! We got some candy!  And stickers! And WeeSing books! And presents! Wooooooooo!

Since we’ve put on our happy faces this past week, we’ve been in a sort of constant state of “well, if we’re going to stay we need x” and then going and getting x. I mean, I decided I need bread pans so I can make beer bread (assuming I can mix up a batch properly without self-rising flour - past attempts have been less than stellar).  Well, while I was there, I bought more than a few loaf pans (see…Seth told me he didn’t care if I went a little nuts, and when you give me permission to shop at a baking supply store…it’s sort of like that mouse and his cookie).  I think maybe I should change the header at the top of my column from Lisbeth says: to Lisbeth bought:, since it seems like lately all I do is catalog our spending. Anyway, I’ll just embrace that for now.  I picked up:

• 4 mini loaf pans
• a hand blender (I got a demo on how to use it - seems they’re not so common here as back home - and had to restrain myself from laughing as she showed me how to turn it on and off and how to push the button to eject the beaters)
• a 3-sided box (pyramid?) grater
• cocoa powder (a big bag, too, since the other option was a twee little bag that held maybe 4 tablespoons)
• sliced almonds (also a big bag)
• parchment paper
• what I think is a poor man’s Silpat knockoff (at any rate, a reusable pan liner)
• a bundt pan that isn’t actually a bundt at all (no grooves, just a smooth oversized donut shape)
• vanilla extract
• orange extract
• a spatula
• a lemon zester
• oven mitts
• baking sheet

I think that’s everything. Now I’ll just have to find a place to put it all.  Maybe I can find some sort of 4th-dimension pocket to install in one of our cabinets, because there sure as heck isn’t any room there right now.

Today started of sort of …eh… and just got better from there.

We met up with Evelyn to go to Taipei for a work thing that was pitched to us as an area fun day - we’d be bowling. I was a little thrown by the fact that we were meeting her at 10:00am (seems a little early for bowling, don’t you think?), but sure, whatever. Then, when we get there, she’s looking for some hotel. Turns out the part they didn’t tell us was that the lunch portion was actually a banquet and mini awards ceremony type thing. Banquet isn’t really the right word - it was buffet style and pretty good, actually (somehow, I never associate good food with banquets, ever). I knew they were feeding us, but in my head, it was pizza, not fancy schmancy stuff. Anyhow, most of the talking was in Chinese, which, you know, we don’t really understand (still working on finding time for Chinese lessons and working on not accidentally saying incredibly innappropriate things), so it was pretty boring.

Then, we finally moved onto the bowling alley around 1:00 or so, and it was … different. The bowling alley was well-lit, with bright white walls and no smoke wafting over from the next lane. Also? The pitchers everyone had were filled with tea, not beer. I mean, sure, we can bowl, it’s fun (I played an almost respectable few games), but it was a little surreal without the seedy element that seems to permeate even the safest midwestern bowling alleys.

After that, we went to Carrefour. It’s a French import that feels remarkably like a super Walmart, given that we were able to buy kitchen appliances and bedsheets and foodstuff in one go. Heh. What’d we get? We finally got stuff to make ourselves feel almost truly settled in, now that we’ve been here over 3 months. Sheesh. Anyway, we got:

• Microwave (~$4700NT)
• Toaster oven (~$1500NT)
• Rice cooker (~$1300NT)
• 2 sets of duvet cover + fitted sheet + pillowcases ($1000NT each)
• Messenger bag for Seth (~$1500NT)
• Shaving cartridges (~$250NT) (I’m sure the inclusion of this one in the list is of incredible interest to you, right?)
• Measuing spoons and liquid measuing cup (~$100NT)
• Plastic corner shelf thingie for the shower (~$250NT)
• Noodles (rotini and pipe rigate {scroll down}) (~$200NT)
• Black bean hot cereal (I’ll have to let you know how that one works out) (~$100NT)

I think that was about everything.  We spent about the equivalent of one week’s pay for one of us, but I think it was worth it.  I can make cookies! And we can now reheat leftovers, if we ever have any (like, say, if I was to cook up a big batch of black beans - yum!) - woo!

So, now that I’ve set up the cooking appliances, and stripped the old dirty sheets and replaced them with some new ones (that are much nicer, incidentally), and graded two days worth of Treehouse homework, and written on of the longer posts I’ve written in a few days (weeks, maybe?), I think it’s time to go to bed!

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans (sorry, all you Canadians, I’m, what, a month late?)! I’m hoping you’re having a great day wherever you are.  So, what am I thankful for?

1. Seth. He is my constant, my life, my joy.  I love you sweetie!
2. The instant potatoes and stuffing and gravy mix I had for dinner tonight - mmm…imitation American goodness! Thanks for sending those Mom!
3. All the incredible good thoughts, love, and can-only-get-it-in-America food and treats people have sent our way.  Truly, these have kept us going during the rough patches.
4. My improving demeanor and positive outlook on life lately (roses and cherries and hearts, oh my!) (oh, the cheesle, it is ooey gooey).
5. Our new NST, for taking a huge load off of our shoulders.
6. Our one working scooter (it looks as though we can probably get by just fine with one, maybe we should sell the lemon?).
7. My new corduroy pants - so cozy! I actually had a student pet my leg when I was wearing them yesterday…

Enjoy your turkey and stuffing (or dressing, if you rather), and save a slice of pecan pie for me! (Wait, you don’t do pecan pie? Well, nevermind then.  You’re missing out, though.)

Today was supposed to be my first evening off during the week since we started  - my Wednesday’s are officially scheduled to end at 4:00, a scandalously early hour round these parts. The plan was to get home super early, do a little laundry, make some mashed potatoes and stuffing and gravy and enjoy an early and abbreviated Thanksgiving. But, plans are made to be completely disregarded, right? Yeah….

Since Seth’s been sick for a while, even after going to the doctor, and also I think because he called in sick today, the CTs at bushiban decided he needed to go to the hospital.  Not to worry, parent-folk! Going to the hospital here is roughly mnyore like going to an actual doctor in a large group practice, whereas just your normal going-to-a-doctor often feels more like the doc-in-a-boxes (urgent care, minor med) back home. He’s got a heaping boatload of drugs (all with differing dosage instructions, ingestion schedules, and how many days worth to take); so many, in fact, that we went and got some pill boxes - three of them, actually.  Ha! I think I’m going to start calling him Gramps. You know, “Hey Gramps, have you taken your pills yet?  Go check your lunchtime box!” Oh, I think he’ll love that.

Anyway, since he called in sick, I get asked to cover his Treehouse 5 class that meets at 4:30.  I can hardly say no - I mean, really, one-time subbing like this is pretty painless, but man! I was looking forward to coming home early on time.

And, since he’s not really in a mood to eat (the doctor at the hospital prescribe rice soup - more of a gruel, really - yummy), I didn’t really want to make our Thanksgiving dinner (such as it is) tonight.  So,  I made rice and cheese.  Just like macaroni and cheese, except with rice.  It was good, but certainly not a permanant substitute of the real thing! I’ll just boil noodles next time.

Today Seth went with his kindy class to a science education center in Taipei. I get to go with my class on Friday.

“It was a pretty easy day, actually,” Seth said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. At one point, before we went into the 4-D movie, they had the kids in this computer room. They just turned them loose and let them run wild.”

“Hmmm…I don’t know that mine could do computer games. I mean, they’re pretty young still.”

“Well, mine didn’t know what they were doing - they were just playing with the mouse, sliding it all around and watching the colors on screen fly around.”

“Huh. Paddy¹ peed his pants three times today.”

I don’t know. I mean, a science center? Really? I guess most of it will be in Chinese, so they might actually understand, but as far as keeping the English going all morning, uh…. This unit’s vocabulary is colors and shapes: we’ve learned red, orange, yellow, gree, blue, purple, pink, circle, square, triangle, diamond, and star. So, I’ll spend the morning pointing out colors and shapes and (ooh, the advanced stuff) colored shapes. You know, “What color is this? What color is this? Can you see a square? Can you see a diamond? Who can find a blue circle? Do you see the yellow square?” Bleh. I’m getting pretty tired of it.

Hmm…other things that are interesting to pretty much nobody, let’s see….I taught my last Kids Club class tonight (yay!), and my last Tuesday/Friday Step Ahead 5 class, since the new NST is starting her regular schedule tomorrow. Woo! No more crazy hurrying from the kindy to the bushiban to make it in time to start teaching (well, except for Mondays and Thursdays, but that’s been my official schedule from the beginning, so I don’t mind that one so much), and more time to do stuff I want to do! Ah, speaking of that “more time” thing, I finally got around to washing some dishes tonight, and Seth worked on cleaning out the grody toaster oven our landlord gave us. He scrubbed it inside and out, and now the racks are sitting in the sink soaking in hot soapy water. Here’s hoping it’ll work once we plug it in - I’m thinking a toasted bagel with a melty slice of American cheese would make and excellent and quick breakfast before we rush off to work!

1. My newest student, who is well under 3 years old. Also, he cries almost constantly (he still hasn’t quite dealt with the Mommy-seperation anxiety), which amuses me more than it annoys me - does that make me a bad person? I mean, look - I took a picture of him crying: Actually, I took a few pictures. Oh, my god, I’ve become my parents. [↩]

We made macaroni and cheese tonight, and my belly hurts a little since I stuffed it so thoroughly.  Mmm…cheese.

So, the new NST begins working officially on Thursday, and I’m super excited, as I get to drop four hours from my official work load.  I’ll lose 2 1-hour shifts (on Tuesday and Friday evenings), and 1 2-hour shift (on Wednesday afternoon). In both cases, the class I’m getting rid of is at the end of my workday, so theory I’ll have more time in the evening to clean/cook/knit/read/fart around on the internet (which one do you think is the most likely?).  Woo!  I’m pretty excited, actually.

One of the things I really want to do is get back into knitting a little more - I’ve got a wedding present to finish and send home, and I’d like to knit myself a cardigan, or maybe finish the Artfibers Tussah silk sweater that’s been on hold for more than a year.  Or make some new socks - I’m really loving my handknit socks lately more and more, but I’ve only got four pairs. Ooh, or maybe a scarf! I could use an everyday all-the-time-scarf that I could wear when I’m a little chilly instead of putting on a jacket (at least until I finish that cardigan…), and then I’d look so effortlessly cool, right?  I mean, only effortlessly cool people can really pull off the casual, all-the-time-scarf.  Although, with my luck, I’d probably be one of the people who look less casually, effortless cool and more like they’re trying really, really hard.

Oooh, I got my ATM card today!  So now I can get money at the 7-11 or at a random street corner.  Yay for easy access!! And for ATMs that have English along side the Chinese on their menus!

We finally had a chance to go back to Costco today. We bought all the important stuff. You’ll notice

1. Cheese
   1. American
   2. Cheddar
2. Bacon
3. Tequila
4. Tylenol
   1. Basic formula
   2. Tylenol cold
5. Robitussin DM
6. Bagels

The most important of these was the cheese. I mean, don’t get me wrong - I’m really excited about finding the tequila. And the bacon. And Seth, who’s finally caught the month-long cold that I had last month, is pretty stoked about the Tylenol and Robitussin. The bagels will be nice on mornings when I’m in a hurry. But truly? It’s all about the cheese. Mmmm….cheese. I can make my famously good mac and cheese again. And I can make cheese toast, if we ever clean up the toaster oven our landlord “gave” us (I use quotes because I’m pretty sure she thought giving it to us was a way to get rid of an old, crappy toaster oven without having to feel guilty about throwing it away). And I can make scrambled eggs with cheese. Or my yummy cheese soup. You get the idea.

I ♥ cheese.

mmm…brown gravy on noodles.  One of my favorite I’m-too-tired-to-cook meals.  One of the things I’ve missed.  Washed down with peanuts and candy corn - I can almost forget all the stress of work.

Thanks mom - birthday box #2 got here a little early. We opened it up and I’ve demolished the peanuts and candy corn, but I’m not going to open my card until Monday!