Get me a pecan

As promised, I spent 3 weeks of my summer visiting with my family before my departure to Moscow. This included a 5 day stay in Amherst, Ohio. Amherst is a small town west of Cleveland. My paternal grandparents are old, both in their 90s both with failing bodies. They both use walkers and talk a lot about their ailments. However, they are still very lucid, loving and caring grandparents.

As always, grandma tried to ply me with food. So, obligingly I ate some of the pecans that were sitting in a bowl. A note on pecans - there are two ways to pronounce this word, I prefer pe-chan with a short "e", but you also hear pea-can with a long "e" and a "k" noise for the "c". Say it outloud a few times for yourself, it will make the story funnier. Trust me.

Ok, so back to the story. "These are good pechans, grandma." "Oh thanks, your parents sent those to us." Me, in my head, "Dear g-d, when was that?!" Turns out it was Christmas time, hopefully of this year. Grandpa: "I can't eat those anymore. Something, something, ailment..." Everything on grandpa seems to be failing now-adays, his kidneys most recently. Seems like if your kidneys don't work, then it's time to start wearing the adult diapers. However, grandpa is way too proud for this. He and grandma fully believe that they had 5 children so that they would have someone to take care of them when they got older.

So there I am for breakfast. Grandma is already awake and has been for hours. She and I are talking in the kitchen while my Uncle Vince is helping grandpa get dressed. Grandpa comes in forcefully on his walker. "Get me a cup of coffee and a glass of water." I do so happily and then grandma tells me to get his oatmeal from the stove. Apparently, grandma makes his oatmeal when she first wakes up so there it is all congealed on the stove. I plop it into a bowl. Grandpa: "Put some honey on it." He has me stop when there are equal amounts of honey to oatmeal and then has me float the concoction in milk. He yells out, "Vince, get me a peacan." I stand up and grab the bowl of pechans. I turn to give them to grandpa as my uncle walks in with a plastic jug that he hooks to grandpa's walker. Apparently that's grandpa's pee can! I blush furiously as grandma starts hooting with laughter.

Let's do this every year...

I'm in Ohio visiting my extended family and today my 90-something year old grandmother asked me if this thing with my boyfriend was "serious." I said, "Well, if we survive the separation between Moscow and Japan, then yes it will be." I asked her how she knew that grandpa was the "one." She told me that she had never wanted to get married, in fact she announced it as often as she could. Early on, when she was 20, apparently she and grandpa had shared a dance and he'd asked her to a formal dance. Well, she borrowed her sister Betsy's formal dress as grandma didn't own one and her own mother came home and refused to let her go out as "no decent girl goes out on a date after dark!" But apparently grandpa persisted and 7 - yes SEVEN - years later he had gone with her to get a christmas tree. Apparently this tree was missing a branch in the middle, so grandpa cut one off the bottom and arranged it to fit into the middle. He helped her decorate the whole tree and said to her, "Let's do this every year." She agreed and a few months later they were married. She gave up her job in the city and moved out to the country with him. That was 61 years ago. They're getting very old now, but neither of them regret any of the years.

Ooops, she did it again

I can't wait to post pictures of this...

I arrived in Atlanta the day after my sister's birthday. She pulls in my parents driveway - radio blasting - about 30 minutes before we're supposed to leave for dinner. Mom and I were still in the middle of a Scrabble game and we all needed to shower. So we head upstairs. Two showers are running, two showers end and then I jump in. Meanwhile the phone rings, it's the neighbor, "Did you hear that crash? We think Sarah's car rolled down the driveway... again." Yes, my sister left her standard transmission car in neutral without the brake set. My parents' driveway is mostly flat with a small hill that curves down toward the garage past the pool. The first time it was minor, it rolled and got stopped by a huge shrub. Mind you that time still cost $2,500 to repair her Jetta.

This time though it missed the big shrub and instead took out the concrete lion (about 1.5' tall) and rolled onto hit the wrought iron fence. Oil pan is dragged off and a terrified toad is covered in oil. My dad and I rescued the toad and the neighbor used his HUGE truck to pull the car out. My sister is hoping its totalled. I thanked her for an amusing start to my visit :) I know, I'm so cruel.

Three Kinds of Love

The boy and I were talking about our futures, whether they are aligned or not. I've been a huge ball of stress thinking about a long distance relationship between Moscow and Japan. He's just applied for a master's program where next summer he'll be taking lab courses in Maryland while I invision myself travelling through Eastern Europe or China.

Regardless of all this, he says that if our love is a love of the soul, we'll come back together. See, he believes in three kinds of love: love of the body, love of the mind and love of the soul. Love of the body is superficial, the first wrinkle, sign of weight gain, grey hair you're out - obviously not our kind of love. Then there's love of the mind, where you have conversation, intellectual match, fun. Even if you separate you can still be friends and possibly come back together. I believe this is the love we share. However, I think we both desire love of the soul - the kind that even if you're separated for ten years you ~have~ to come back together there is no one else for you.

So where does that leave us? I have no idea - but I'm feeling better about just seeing what happens.

Good-bye, Serafina!

I sold my car yesterday, woo hoo! But now I have to say good-bye. She is a great little car, incredible gas mileage, I never once had a flat or any other problem really. Of course saying good-bye to her also means saying good-bye to my St. Mary's debt, WOO HOO! Thanks, Serafina!

Yume-Ya!

Ok, now that I've written about my stresses, I can write about my first, but certainly not my last!, Izakaya experience. Wil and I met up with two other couples down at Yume-Ya in Sunnyvale for dinner. One of those dinners that I love that lasts almost 2 hours and includes the waitresses coming with multiple dishes and taking aways multiple dishes, several bottles of cloudy Japanese liquor that comes in a pink bottle.

So Izakaya is a type of Japanese dining that involves eating small plates of food whilst consuming sake. I'm fairly certain what we were drinking was not sake, but we did eat many small plates of food:

• We arrived to spicy fish balls waiting at our seats


• Spinach with sesame sauce


• Lotus root stuffed with shrimp


• Shrimp stuffed mushrooms


• Cuttlefish (squid) in butter sauce


• Some sort of incredible pork stew


• Bitter melon (it is not named so in jest) with (sweet succulent) pork belly


• Pumpkin Croquettes


• Snail skewers (the only really disappointment of the evening)


• Pickled Vegetables (far different from the kim chi type of Korean cuisine, these were mild and delicate, but had enough unique vegetables that I was still intrigued, until that last unidenified horrible green)


• Chicken Cutlet with Ponz sauce


• Halibut sashimi with ponzu sauce - this was awesome. Paper thin slices for you to roll around two types of radish bits


• Dessert - panne cotta, yes, I know bizarre, but wonderfully creamy with a strongly flavored caramel topping

Thank you to my friends for introducing me to this place and this type of dining!

Stress Managment

I don't manage stress very well. I can't sleep or when I do sleep I grind my teeth. I get knots in my shoulders and mostly take it out on William, the calmest of calm. And this shouldn't even be stressful. I mean, damn, someone is coming to my house to pack for me!

Oh, but wait, the packing in and of itself means I'm moving to MOSCOW. Where I know no one, where it will be FREEZING for an average of 5 months out of the year. I've been very lucky in the bay area, hell, in my whole life really, and I'm confident that Moscow will be no exception. I've always said I wanted to move abroad and in actuality, will probably end up staying abroad for many years.

So then what else is there, hrmmm, oh right, there's that whole I've been living very happily with William for the past 8 months and in all likely hood that too will end as he moves to Japan. The current plan is that he'll join me next school year in Russia, but we both acknowledge that it's just a plan and is subject to change. Beyond that he has his whole life planned out, Japan, then law school, then working on making this world of public education a better place. My plan is that I have no plan - yes, I am incredibly anal about planning the present, but the future, well that is the one area of my life I just sort of fly by the seat of my pants. I can see myself hopping from international school, country to country. I don't want to come back to the states just to follow the boy to law school - though at some point I do want to get my masters in mathematics, but whose to say that has to be at a US university???

So, there you have it. The thoughts that have me awake 5 hours after I laid down. Now the curtains have to come off the wall and the sheets off the bed to be packed.

I hate moving

And this time it isn't even so bad. We had a highly successful yard sale Sunday where we ended up selling almost all the furniture we've acquired over the past year, including our beautiful table and six chairs. We ended up getting almost two-thirds of what we paid for it even! The couch, bookcase, kitchen island, kitchen shelves, dressers are all gone. Meaning all the stuff that lived in those places is now just sitting around the house. It's driving me crazy, but then it will all be gone tomorrow with the movers. And then we'll be in a house that has only a bed and our suitcases of clothes for 5 days.

The reality of the whole situation hasn't really set in yet. I still have not begun studying my Russian in earnest nor have I bought a statistics book to brush up on. Instead, Wil and I went and saw Mr. Brooks. Shockingly, Kevin Costner has made a movie that didn't suck, excluding Robin Hood Prince of Theives, of course! It was dark, a bit scary and fascinating.

And now tonight, we're off to try Izakaya which is akin to Japanese tapas. I'll post how that goes later (assuming I remember ;))

End of Year

Finals started today, thank god. I've been mean recently to my students. It's so frustrating watching so many of them fail. Our principal has been telling us we need to figure out ways to make students pass. Ooh, I've got one, make them come to school - counting up total absences for the semester the highest was 76. Now that was extreme, but many were in the teens, low twenties and that doesn't include tardies.

But then, I still have several students who come every day and are still failing. They do no homework and maybe half of all the class work, thus, failing most tests. I just don't understand how you can come to school every day and actively do nothing. Then there are the ones who I told "You have to get a "B" on the final to pass." And then these past 4 days when I've given them review problems and time to ask me questions. They'd sit there chatting. When I'd remind them of the needed B, they'd say, don't worry you'll get it. As if it were a contest.

Don't they know I've already passed algebra!

After I finish grading finals tomorrow, I'll come back with statistics.

In the mean time, I found out that I'll have 3 preps next year in Moscow, meaning of my 5 classes, 3 of them will be different. I've got 3 9th/10th grade, 1 upper level IB juniors and 1 12th grade Math Studies, which I'm assuming is equivalent to "Math for music majors" or something. Grumble. I wanted all higher level math. Or at the very least a maximum of 2 preps. There go my visions of me walking around Moscow in the evenings.

CSA week of 5/30

Our box has been brimming with great stuff these past few weeks and I've been making great stuff with it. We got some wild arugula and basil last week which became a spicy pesto. After a visit in the country with Amy, we turned some of her fresh milk (omg so good!) into ricotta, which got layered with the pesto, sliced potatoes, artichoke sausage and homemade tomato sauce into a "lasagna."

This weeks fresh basil got turned into Basil Beer Bread which was incredibly fast. I got the recipe from my CSA news letter, which they inturn got from Eating Well magazine:

Preheat oven to 400. Coat a baking sheet with evoo.

Mix:
3.25 cups all purpose flour
1 package yeast
1.5 tsp kosher salt
.5 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup parmesan

Stir in just until mixed:
1 12 oz bottle of ale

Turn onto a counter and knead just until incorporated:
1 cup chopped or torn fresh basil

Form bread into a round. Bake until golden brown, 40-45 minutes. I did 40, but should have gone at least 45 (yes, it was still doughy in the middle, d'oh)

Let rest on a wire rack 10 minutes before slicing.

It's very yeasty tasting, toasts up great and would be great for sandwhiches. I put a fried egg on it for breakfast this morning. Delicious!

I also made a basil vinagrette for the fresh spinach and salad greens. I haven't decided how to cook the kale yet and of course the strawberries got devoured on the ride home.

Movers!

I get movers. The kind who will come to my house pack everything up for me and ship it off. Then a few weeks after I get to Moscow, my stuff will arrive and presumably be unpacked for me. I have a shipping allowance of 6 cubic meters, roughly 1200 pounds! Return trip is 8 cubic meters. Hoo boy!

Also, I just received a letter from the girl vacating my soon to be apartment. It's 2 bedrooms - so visitors you'll actually have a guest room! Aparently very roomy with a gas stove in the kitchen with tons of storage space - did I mention I'll have movers to pack up all my kitchen gear!! - a large living/dining room and a laundry room. I haven't known this decadence since living my corporate life in Denver.

Oh, and I also signed up to have a once a week house cleaner come. I promised William I would try to live neater in Moscow and I think this will be a great help. Spoiled, yes. But I'll have more time to learn Russian and cook this way. That's what I'll keep telling myself...

On days when it's good

Also yesterday, I had one of the best days in terms of student learning, thinking and application. We've been learning how to solve systems of equations. Two days ago I gave my honors students the following problems:

ax + b = y
x + c = y

and

ax + by + c = 0
ax + cy + b = 0

They were to solve both problems for x and y in terms of a, b and c. This is very abstract. Higher level thinking and application of what I've been teaching them. It blew their minds. They hated me for a solid 10 minutes until the bell rang. The next day, I let them know they weren't off the hook. We talked about how ax - x = (a -1)x. And then I gave them back their papers, mostly blank still. I told them to work with their groups to solve these and that they counted as today's quiz grade. Several of them ROCKED it! Many of them got off to a good start. There was lots of talking about math and solving math. Sigh. I'm so proud!

On days when it's bad

Well, yesterday in our common planning time (CPT) - a period that all the math teacher have off so we can work together - another teacher mentioned he's had great success with his incessant chatters by tellling them to go in the hall and talk to the tree out in the courtyard. My room doesn't have a tree in front of it but does have a trash can. So I have this student, Larry, who rarely comes to class. When he does he's always disruptive. Earlier this year I met with his mother who told me she's raised him never to appologize and that he has to talk back in order to be heard. Anyway he was a constant stream of inappropriate, unnecessary comments. "Larry please stop talking". More talking, "Larry please stop talking." More talking, "Larry I don't want to hear another word". More of the same, "Larry, if you can't stop talking go in the hall and talk to the trash can." Boy, was that the wrong thing to say. What insued was about 10 minutes of the student cursing at me, telling me to get out of his face before he started something, two security gaurds entering, student refusing to leave and finally me telling the rest of the class to take their things. I barged in on a teacher who had his prep period and begged him to use his class where I continued the lesson (thank god for co-workers who you like and who you know will let you do this!) But of course me having to do that was ridiculous. And awful. I do not get paid enough to have people yell profanities at me. I was actually hoping he would hit me so that I can press charges beyond just him threatening me.

Sidebar - WTF?!

Alright, so I've finally gotten around to updating a few links in the sidebar. However, all I can make it read for a title successfully is "Links" if I try "Knitting Links" it goes all direct text. Here's the code:

<$I18NLinks$>

That works and it reads "LINKS"

as does :

<$I18NPreviousPosts$>

So, I tried

<$I18NKnittingLinks$>

And what shows up on screen:
<$I18NKnittingLinks$>

WTF?

My first Quinceanero

I'd never been to a quinceanero (a young woman's 15th birthday party celebrated in many Latin American cultures). When I was invited this year I jumped on the chance. William came along as my translator and it was crazy.

We pull up to this reception hall and I get comments like, "Whoa, Ms. S. You're ... pretty!?" And there is my student, the birthday girl, standing in a wedding like dress...



There are damas and chambelanes, the birthday equivalent of bride's maids and groom's men, except their all for the quinceanera, the birthday girl. There's food and beer and a lot of waiting. Turns out we're waiting for the dance. Part of the quinceanera's introduction into society is a dance presentation. Apparently there can be up to 3 dances, but this quince had just one, a waltz.

Apparently, they take their practice lessons as seriously as their homework. Because after the first minute of so, the birthday girl goes up to the DJ stand and has him turn of the music, she leaves the room in a huff. Now, having never been to one I had to have my translator explain what happened. According to William, they were all messing up the steps and not doing what they were supposed to. So there's more waiting while the birthday girl is outside crying and yelling, I'm guessing.

I took that time to examine the cake, 4 levels, 5 different cakes with a fountain in the middle.


Half an hour or so passes with no music, just people sitting around and the presentation begins again. The damas and chambelones are introduced. The birthday girl is presented and they dance again. No one is smiling, but they've all got their turns synchronized.



After this, William and I choose to head off for some sushi. The quinceanera gives me a bit of her poutiness, "But you just got here!" However, we'd been there two hours and my camera was out of batteries. To see more photos go to my Flickr Quinceanero Set

Soulful Southern Supper

10 of us went to Sweetie Pie and Poppy's in Oakland yesterday for their Sunday buffet. It's on 52nd and MLK for those of you who know Oakland. They're only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Sunday is the only day they do the buffet. Buffet is $15.95 which includes your drink. On the buffet:

• White rice
  
• Butter (lima) beans
  
• Black-Eyed Peas
  
• Pinto Beans
  
• Collard Greens
  
• Sweet Potatoes w/ brown sugar and nutmeg
  
• Fried Chicken
  
• Fried Catfish
  
• Egg Noodles with Chicken and Mushrooms
  
• Some sort of stewed chicken
  
• Ribs
  
• Mac and Cheese
  
• Cornbread Stuffing
  
• Gravy
  
• Iceburg Salad
  
• Coleslaw
  
• Potato Salad
  
• Cranberry Sauce
  
• Corn Muffins
  
• Dinner Rolls
  
• German Chocolate Cake
  
• Sweet Potato Pie w/ graham crust and chili pecans
  
• Cupcakes
  
• White cake
  
• Brownies
  
• Cookies
  

It was insane! Their iced tea was sweet (of course) and had a bit of lemony flavor I enjoyed. I loved the catfish. Their veggies are all vegetarian, which was great for our veggie friends, but I would have appreciated some ham hock in the beans. The sweet potatoes got comments of "how'd they do that?" The sweet potato pie was also delicious. Mac and cheese almost too cheesy - and not with velveta! Gravy and stuffing were perfect! I've never enjoyed buffet food so much.

Service was quick and very friendly. We also went at 3, so we missed most of the church crowd. Though in our jeans, Joy commented that next time she wanted to dress up. We were really glad we'd walked there because we desperately needed the walk back.

CSA - Week of 4/18

I love, love, love my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box that I get from Mariquita Farm. Today we got:

super sweet strawberries

baby carrots

spinach

kale

salad mix

fresh fava beans!

dandelion greens

Tonight we ate the carrots and fava beans in an Indian dinner. I also ate about half the strawberries driving home.

Tomorrow, it'll be a big salad for lunch, leftovers for dinner. More salad for Friday's lunch and we're going out Friday night, so Saturday will have to be some sort of creation with the greens.

Yay!

Spring Break Dining! New Orleans

William and I are on spring break. We started in Houston where I caught up with many friends, half of whom now have kids which I got to meet :) We ate at some of my old favorites - tappas at Mi Luna, crawfish and gumbo at Rajin' Cajun. We never made it to House of Pies unfortunately.

Sunday we headed east and made it to New Orleans. We only went to the French Quarter, but in driving and walking around what we kept saying is how empty it looked. The Quarter is in pretty good shape, with a few bulging buildings and sagging balconies, but it's just empty. The bars are still loud and pumping out the booze, but there's far less people buying.

We thought a hotel would be way out of our price range and we ended up getting a room just off Canal St. for $89! Heck, we're currently in small town Florida, only a stop off the highway for $30 more! Anyway, back to New Orleans. We went and hit Cafe du Monde for beignets and Johnny's for po-boys. Both great and traditional, but the stand out of the evening was Louisiana Bistro. Below is the review I wrote for Yelp:

No, I'm not actually from Louisiana. But I did grow up in the south and I love food. In fact, I'll admit it, I'm a food snob. And in more disclosure, if you've read Felix's other review you'll note this is a completely different style, well, that's because this is Felix's girlfriend. Ok, so onto the Louisiana Bistro.

After roaming the French Quarter, it was the ambiance - small not at all touristy - and the chalk board special of a frog legs appetizer that drew us into the Louisiana Bistro. There were only two tables occupied, yet we were asked if we had a reservation. We didn't and they gave us a small table by the window.

We perused the menu, which changes frequently and even though everything looked great, we decided to go with the chef's tasting menu. You could choose from 3, 4 or 5 courses for $39, 49 and 59 respecitively, shockingly affordable or maybe that's just because we're from the SF Bay Area. We decided to go with the 4 courses to sample as much as we could fit in our bellies.

The chef personally came out to our table to ask us what we're allergic to or afraid of. We also mentioned that we had specifically come in because we saw the frog legs and that it was my birthday. Turns out the chef normally does not include items from the menu in the tasting, he uses the tasting as a chance to be creative and play outside the menu. However, as our first course we got the frog legs. We each got three legs, perfectly fried on top or a buerre blanc sauce swirled with a cayenne. It may not be the most appropriate, but I picked mine up and ate it with my hands. I then used the warm rolls, with a crisp crust and soft fluffy inside, to soak up the rest of the sauce.

When the chef came out again to ask us how it was, I told him that would be a tough act to follow and in fact the 2nd course was a bit disappointing. We were served what he called a bit of old school mixed with new school. Crawfish etouffe topped with a crawfish beignet. The etouffe was the disappointing part, it needed both salt and some more kick. However, the beignet totally made up for it. Fluffy and some what dense at the same time, full of crawfish tails. Drool.

Third course, pan seared trout topped with blue crab stuffing and sauced with a jalepeno hollandaise. Dear lord. I now have complaints I've never had with a restaurant, our food was coming out too fast and the servings were too big. Our tastings were large appetizer sized. We easily could have shared each plate. We were already stuffed and only on the third course!!

So the chef postponed the arrival of the last course. After a while in which Felix and I attempted to create more space in our bellies, our last course arrived. A cayenne crusted domestic lamb loin cooked to each of our tastes (med-rare for me, well-done for Felix) served with an andouille sausage sweet potato hash. Dear lord. The lamb was so well done, perfectly crusted on the outside, nice lamb flavor on the inside. I didn't have any room for the hash, but it had the nice smokey andouille flavor.

The chef came out and asked us if we had room for dessert. We were so stuffed we said we couldn't, well, we were brought dessert anyway for my birthday. I'm so glad he didn't list to me because after all the deliciousness, we got something even better. An ice cream float with cream cheese ice cream made with "Nawlins Nectar". I've never heard of this, but it seemed to be a peachy type soda. The cream cheese ice cream was so incredible, cream cheese flavor in ice cream. Its richness slightly sourness perfectly complemented by the soda. I ended up scrapping the bottom of the glass.

If you're still reading this, obviously I loved this place. Go there.

Next Up

Moscow!!

This past weekend the boy and I attended a job fair for international schools. We interviewed with six schools spread across the globe - Brazil, Russia, Turkey, Thailand, Korea and China. I really liked the head from Turkey, however that position ended up being filled before I could even interview for it. Brazil also ended up getting filled by a local hire. China I was not so into.

However, we both really liked the options in Korea, Thailand and Russia. It was agonizingly painful. We had roughly 15 hours to decide. The position in Korea ended up being our first choice, but they ended up offering it to another couple. So we were down to Thailand and Russia. We ended up picking Russia because the Thai school was located 20 minutes outside of Chiangmai. I ~love~ Chiangmai. However, 20 minutes by car outside the city would mean we'd need to buy a car. It's also a boarding school which would mean we'd be surrounded by the students all the time. Further William would have been the science department and I'd be teaching 5 of the 7 offered math classes and all of those 5 would have been different.

However, with Moscow, the only science position they had for the boy was chemistry which he's not all that into. Besides he is keen to spend a year in Japan. So he'll go to Japan, hopefully with the JET program. However, the director of AAS (Anglo-American School) likes him and knows that in a year he'll have 1-2 Biology positions. For me, I'll be teaching upper level IB math. It's a sweet schedule too.

There are eight periods for students total, four periods a day. And those four periods are taught in different orders. For example: Mon: ABCD Tues: EFGH Wed: CDAB Thur: GHEF, etc. Which is something that would make a huge difference with my teaching right now since my classes at the end of the day are the worst performing.

I'm super excited, scared, over whelmed. And right now really need to be preparing for the coming week. So there you have it.

Woo hoo!

Pizza Man!

(taken from my post on the Cooking Light Bulletin Board)

The boy wanted to cook for me and so all on his own he went to epicurious and found some recipes he wanted to try. I do 95% of the cooking in our house hold, he has tried to cook for me once which ended in me having to "save" the sauce and finish the rest of the meal. The second time he cooked just for himself and gave himself food poisoning, literally. He's happy to eat 4 bowls of cereal for every meal, so this was a big deal.

The only thing we did together was go shopping. He ended up making this Sausage, Red Onion and Wild Mushroom Pizza. OMG!! It was incredible. The red pepper, piave (like a creamier parm) and rosemary pressed into the crust added tons of flavor (truth be told I think he might have pressed those into the dough and then put the dough upside down on the baking sheet because it seemed like all the piave was on the bottom, but this made for a crisp cheese bottom crust!). He used a lamb sausage on my pizza and a turkey on his.

He also made this Prosciutto, Pear and Fennel Salad that he plated just like out of a fancy restaurant. I thought the salad could have used more fenel (only 1/2 a cup for 4 servings?!) but the flavor combo was great.

All told, he spent 45 minutes "translating" the recipes so that he could understand them and then cooking for 2.5 hours, lol. But the house smelled great and when we sat down to eat at 9, it was delicious! I told him now I know for sure that I can go back to the corporate world and leave him alone to be a stay-at-home husband!