A Busy Day Ahead: Friday 5 August

It is about 10am.  Sandra went to the office on the 8.30am bus.  I have been making apricot jam from some dried apricots that I bought yesterday in Rahat Market.  It is taking longer to reach setting point than I expected and I am wondering if I should have added some pectin.  At the same time I poached some pears in a local wine (MYCKAT) with cardamom, ginger and vanilla.  These are for tonight's dessert as we are having 5 people for dinner.  

I have also started a new batch of yoghurt, it is sitting on the balcony (which is enclosed by glass) incubating in its jug.  This is to share with friends who are desperate for plain yoghurt.

 The yoghurt is made with powdered milk a large supply of which I brought from California.  But yesterday in Ramstore I actually found powdered milk.  It was loose in plastic bags along with a lot of other mysterious stuff.  I thought MOLOKO looked suspiciously like it could be milk, and it is.  So we can get it, probably not skimmed, but it will make better yoghurt for that.

So, the supermarket had milk, but strangely no sugar, except in lumps.  It baffles me how a supermarket has no sugar.  I can understand it had no grapefruit, though that is a rare event, but no sugar.  Well there is no real milk either, so there goes my cup of tea.

Sandra and I walked out in the evening down to another supermarket, Ideal, which is actually a chain.  The one we went to is called the Halliburton Ideal, for some reason unknown to most people.  We had no problem getting sugar and grapefruit, but there was no western ground coffee (plenty of instant!).

We walked on down from there to the Residence that is used by most of the Agip expats, the Renco Hotel (not really an hotel though).  It has about 5 restaurants including one by the swimming pool on the roof.  If that sounds like luxury, it is a lot better than most people from Shell get, and despite a venture wide agreement to pool housing and allocate it on a fair basis, Agip keep the Renco and Marriot for their own people!  We sat on the roof and had a pizza.

Notice the solid railing obscure a seated persons view, so Sandra puts on her X-Ray Specs!

It isn't very fancy, and as you can see from the pictures below, it is not in the greatest condition.  You may notice the artificial palm trees which had nails holding on the branches and which were wired to the trellace to stay upright (or at least some were....a couple had broken loose and keeled over.  A pizza, two beers and a water cost about US 25.00

But yesterday we went for lunch at a place called Bolashak across the road from Sandra's office.  It is very much for local people and no English spoken or even on the menu.  We had two courses each, salad and meatballs (S), Soup and "Goulash" (M) and bottled water for only $8.00, and it wasn't bad.

                        
Anyway, I am now going off to Rahat to do some shopping and then I'll meet Sandra for lunch.  This afternoon will be cooking for dinner.