It's Baketime!

Today I was feeling up to baking -- I've only been wanting to bake for the last month or so. So today, I said to hell with cleaning, I'm baking. Of course that still required cleaning up the kitchen because it is so tiny, but I did it. Then I made shortbread and chocolate cookies. While that's not good for our waistlines, it was certainly good for my spirits.

Julia also got me a new baking pan today. It's got six shallow escallops so it can be used for baking or candy-making. It worked wonderfully for the shortbread!

I also discovered something wonderful! One of our local groceries sells caster's sugar. Caster's sugar is finely ground sugar, like confectioner's sugar, but without the cornstarch. So I'm going to try to make sugar plate with it and see how it goes. I've tried cheating with confectioner's sugar, but it starts hardening too fast (and requires a lot more liquid than the recipe suggests). Then it never gets that porcelain-like finish it should have.

S

The Earthquake in Pakistan

The earthquake today hit me in a curious way - as far as natural disasters go, it's been one of those weeks. One of my standard ethnographies that I use in Intro to Cultural Anthropology is about a community in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, along whose border with Kashmir (the Pakistani part) the earthquake occurred. The Northwest Frontier Province is a pretty isolated area, for all that it's close to Islamabad. Isolated communities keep to themselves in high mountain valleys. The death toll so far is mostly based on reports from the Kashmir side, and so is almost certain to rise as more information comes from the other side.

The reason I say it's been one of those weeks is that I've visited some of the communities hit by mudslides in Central America. The worst problems there are in communities in Guatemala, near Lake Atitlan. I haven't been to Panabaj, but I've been to Santiago Atitlan, the headtown of the municipio.

I'm not sure what to say, besides asking you to keep in your thoughts and prayers the many people around the world who've suffered from natural disasters in the last year (starting with the tsunami, and doubtless not done yet) as well as manmade ones (like the victims of the bombing in Bali). And be generous; the people who have been displaced had in many cases so little, and have now such great need.

-J