Hot Chili Peppers

I blowdried my hair today. Then I tried to take a close-up picture to show you, but all of them came out awful. So I took this photo from a distance. Pardon the broom and dustpan in the background, I forgot about them.

Just jeans and a t-shirt today. I did some grocery shopping and visited my friend's shop. Had a nice chat. These jeans are grey, I don't know why they look blue in this photo.

Last night I cooked a nice chili con carne. It's one of my favorite dishes. I think we all have some dishes that we cook when we don't know what to cook. Am I right? For me it's an Indian curry (Bombay curry with coconut milk or Madras curry without), spag bog (that's bolognese) and chili. All of them spicy hot.

Here is the pot of chili on the stove. In the beginning I used to follow the recipe quite religiously, but with the years started to improvise and substitute what I don't have with what's available. Of course, some things you just can't do without. Then you send your husband to the store. I'm busy cooking for you, darling! Off you go!

It was so hard finding chili powder here!!! I tried to get it online but US sites selling tex-mex spices didn't want to ship to Israel. So when I found it in a small supermarket (I'm sure it was there by accident), I bought 5 jars! It's better to have expired and slightly stale chili powder than nothing at all.

Some spices are just not available here. My lovely cousin is coming to visit from Paris in about 3 weeks. So what do I ask her to bring? Cayenne pepper, bouquet garni and herbes de Provence! And nothing from Sephora which we don't have here either :(

Talking about cayenne and chili - have you seen the movie The Mistress of Spices with Ayshwarya Rai? Isn't she exquisitely beautiful?

A Day in the Life

My Kid likes to take pictures. Last weekend he took about 400 photos, mostly of the sleeping dog and cats. I had to edit the "collection", deleting all things out of focus and endless repeats of Boomer snoring on the couch. While I was doing that, I decided to put together some pics that he took last Saturday while on a trip to Ashdod with my parents. This will give you an idea of where we live and what it looks like.

First they went to the beach. In the summer it would be packed with tourists and locals. But not in November (though tourists from colder countries would consider this beach and swimming weather).



There, an old couple enjoying the sun. And a container ship (Ashdod port is Israel's main cargo port, it's huge).

This is Moroccan culture center. Inside there's a bunch of shops, couple of restaurants. Looks pretty.

A close-up of a weird looking building. To me it's something you might see in "Blade runner" only in the sunlight, not the rain.

This picture Kid took from the car. Typical Ashdod street in a residential area on a Saturday. Nobody around except some children. Lots of parked cars.

After the beach they went to "Tiv Taam" - the largest chain of non-kosher stores in the country. Used to be that you could buy "exotic" things like coconut milk and brown sauce (that's HP sauce) only here. Which is not the case anymore. They have a large selection of booze. Their prices are not cheap but we still like to go there. This is probably the only food store open on Saturday and it gets quite packed.

Nice display of fruit and veg.

And again. It's the season of persimmons.

Living in Canada and Greece I always fondly remembered how cheap fruit and veg were in Israel. I remember leaving a shop in Corfu with a baggie of vegetables - couple of apples, a bunch of parsley, some tomatoes and cukes, possibly an avocado - and it cost me 18 euros!!!! I was in shock. Since then prices in Israel have gone up, but I can still pay 10 euros and drag 2 - 3 full bags home. Good stuff.

That's it for our mini-tour. Back to clothes tomorrow.