While reading about the societal differences between Bedouin nomads and sedentary peoples as observed by the 14th century historian Ibn Khaldun, I couldn't help comparing his 700-year-old remarks to the living situations of many today.

I used to joke with my sister about living out of a tent around campus (especially when I was having a less-than-enjoyable experience with some previous roommates), but there are some college students who truly have no home and yet still manage to remain in school. I've moved around plenty so far in my life-- I've lived in five different states and have had a total of 22 (non-family) roommates in the past 6 years.
It sure has gotten to be a pretty easy deal. During my first real move to a new state, I remember being about nine years old, crammed into a tiny international student housing apartment with my family. I remember two specific things about the apartment: the lingering food smell from previous inhabitants and the echo on the cold tiles. And I remember the little neighbor boy who snatched my bike for a joyride around the apartment building. I was none too happy.

And then there was the first time I moved away from "home", 70 miles away from my family. I was so homesick for the first week. Thinking back, that seems like nothing! Of course I still miss my family when I'm away, but I feel like I can make myself at home almost anywhere I end up.

 While on the drive back from California, my mom and I saw yurts around a lot of the less-populated areas of Arizona. They're popular because of the price (~$10,000) and their obvious portability. It seems to be a more appealing option than the typical trailer home, both functionally and financially (and aesthetically, don't you think?). They've even got yurt hotels there.

It must be kind of like the time my sister and I spent a week living in a teepee at Vashon Island, Washington. What fun we had, except for the cold showers!

As for me, I wouldn't mind having a space like this to call my own. It might be like a cross between luxury camping and frugal intrepid living, but I could see myself enjoying it for a while. And when I'm done, I can simply pack up and move on to something or somewhere different.

a new language!

I just love learning languages. I always have, at least since I started with French in seventh grade. (Okay, I took a semester of Spanish before that but for some reason never really got attached to it) After seven years of that, I was ready for something new and moved on to Georgian. I did not have much help with this language, because out of 5 million speakers of whom most tend to be located on another continent, it's not very likely you'll run into someone who can help you when you face something like the inevitable grammar question. But, there's always the internet! I've found several sites that have been very helpful over the years, especially unilang.org, which has forums and plenty of people to answer your questions.

After learning the Tibetan alphabet and some useful phrases this spring semester thanks to a student from work, I kept practicing throughout the summer. This was mostly because I spent two hours commuting to and from the museum each day on the trolley, and so I traded off knitting and learning a language to pass the time.  Then on the first day of classes, on Monday, I walked out of the office at work and saw a sign on the bulletin board for the elementary Tibetan class at KU. What fun! I checked enrollment once I got home and coincidentally the class was only two days a week and at a time when I don't have class or work, so of course I signed up. I'm thinking it will be a good mental break from my regular grad school classes.

home again

It's nice to be back home again to my own room, own comfortable bed, and kitchen where the baking pan fits in the oven and I don't have to lay it in at a diagonal. Tonight the museum studies program had a start-of-the-semester potluck where we got to meet all the new first year graduate students. There's some rule about not trying out new recipes for the first time when you're serving it to others, but I was in the mood for something new and chose to anyway.

Like I said I wanted to do earlier, I did indeed find some Finnish recipes and decided on one that I had especially enjoyed at the museum: karjalanpiirakka. I had to post a description of this food on Aardvark to figure out exactly what it was I was looking for, but thanks to Tilman in Helsinki who responded, I was able to find recipe for these Karelian pies. And here is the result:

They are rye crusts with filling (I used ground lamb for half and rice for the other) and butter/hard boiled egg topping. They were delicious! Actually, I only got to eat one (before the potluck) and when I went to pick up my platter afterwards, they were gone.

Karjalanpiirakka (Karelian pastry or pie)

Crust
1 c rye flour (you can find it in the bulk section, or Bob's Red Mill)
1/2 c all-purpose flour
1 t salt
1/2 c water

2 T melted butter
2 T milk

Filling
1 lb ground lamb
salt
pepper
dill
OR
1 c cooked rice
1/2 c milk
salt

Egg Butter
3 T melted butter
3-4 hard boiled eggs, finely diced
1/2 t ground ginger

To make the filling:
>If you're using meat, brown the meat in a skillet and season with salt, pepper, and dill.
>For rice, heat the rice with the milk and stir at a simmer until it thickens, like rice pudding. Season with salt.

For the crust:
1. Mix flours and salt and then add water and stir to form dough. It should not be sticky, otherwise it will not hold.
2. Roll into a log and cut into about 10 pieces and form balls. Use a rolling pin or your fingers to flatten each ball into about a 6" circle.
3. Preheat oven to 400 F.
4. Fill each piece of crust with about 3 T of filling, spreading it out nearly to the edges. Hold two opposite corners and begin folding in the edges and crimping them, leaving about 1/2" of crust around the top edge and the center exposed. Place pastries on a baking sheet.
5. Mix the 2 T melted butter and 2 T milk  together and use a pastry brush to brush the pastries.
6. Bake at 400 F for about 10-15 minutes or until golden brown at edges and the rye crust is crispy.

Egg Butter:
1. Mix together the butter, diced hard-boiled eggs, and ginger until it is a somewhat mashed consistency.
2. Serve as a topping with the pastries.

Dr. Seuss

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” --Theodor Seuss Geisel

The Dr. Seuss tree in La Jolla (where he once lived). photo credit

Sockerkaka med Applen

I was in the mood for baking a cake this afternoon, but I wanted something simple, not too sweet or time-consuming, so I settled on a Swedish apple cake. Here's the recipe:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
 2 apples: thinly slice one with skins on, peel and dice the second
Apple or other preserves for glazing

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter a baking dish, 9" pie pan, round cake pan, whatever you prefer. I used a ceramic tart pan that was large and so added some extra flour along with some milk.
2. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in one bowl.
3. Beat together the eggs, sugar, vanilla, and butter in another bowl.
4. Combine dry and wet ingredients and add in the peeled/diced apples.
5. Pour batter into pan and arrange the sliced apples on top in some pretty way.
6. Bake for about 20-25 minutes. If you like, you can heat up some preserves, mix with a bit of water, and spread over the top to glaze.

And there you go!

at home...

...in the anthropology museum. That's where I spent my evening-- at the Museum of Man in Balboa Park. It was Tower After Hours, which is the museum's monthly cultural night, and this night was Finland. I went just as much for Finland as I did for the rest of the museum. With admission, they also gave out two tickets for drinks, although I only made it through one glass of wine. The food was amazing, as was the museum.

Mmmm.... and I went back for seconds. And then dessert. And then dessert seconds.

I'm not exactly sure what I ate, but rye bread, eggs, dill, smoked fish and some sort of creamy sauce seemed to make up many of the choices, all in different varieties, and all delicious. I'll have to go hunt down some recipes now.

I'll admit I almost didn't go, but then decided that 9 out of 10 times I do something I'm wary about, I end up enjoying it, and this time was definitely worth it. I thought, not another mummy exhibit, but to my amazement it wasn't your typical King Tut sort. It had mummies from all over, even a hawk mummy found in Arizona. Whoever thought this one up is my hero, and surprisingly, mummies smell good.

lotus oil (lovely), natron salt, cedar oil (also very nice), palm oil, frankincense & myrrh

I loved this little addition to the cultural evolution area:

How cute!

 Also, there was a bone oddity exhibit-- all sorts, from disease to human modifications (think corsets and foot binding). It makes you wonder if certain beauty "modifications" we see today will someday be regarded as plain horrific or maybe we will realize them as detrimental to our health as these sort of things are generally viewed now. I wish I could describe everything I saw, but that's just too difficult! It was everything an anthropology museum should be, and so of course I enjoyed myself very much.

Here is the tower referred to in Tower after Hours

Balboa Park in the evening, with far fewer people

You may be able to grow all sorts of things in California that you can't grow elsewhere, but one thing that's impossible here is grass. I'm pretty sure there are only two real grass plots in all of San Diego: in Balboa Park and surrounding the administrative building.

I walk by the administrative building every day since it sits between the trolley and the boat. I think it's beautiful.

Yep, that's it. And my feet just ache from walking on pavement, so I am becoming desperately in need of some thick tall grass. I went to Balboa Park last weekend, just so I could sit in the grass and knit. Also this past weekend, I volunteered at Crest Canyon, an area in Del Mar that was saved by a community in the 1970s from development, so there it sits in an urban setting, a preserve of all that is native to southern California.

Crest Canyon, with a little stream down the center that flows into that river in the lowlands that looks like snow (1980)

Our job was to remove invasive plants, and I was only interested in this because I wanted to know which plants were native and which were not. Clearly I knew nothing because our leader got overly upset when I pulled up some buttercup plants instead of the terrible mustard plants. Oops.

Turns out fennel, which I've seen growing all over here is considered invasive. Here I am trying to keep my now somewhat-tall fennel plant alive, and we were chopping down fennel plants that had grown to 10 feet tall and had 1" thick stems. It sure smelled good at least.

my little fennel plant that I bought at the farmer's market back in Kansas and dragged all the way to California, only to find out it's a "weed"

Another plant that surprised me as invasive is the ice plant (or highway ice plant, because it's grown all over the interstates). It's a succulent that people put it in their yards as ground cover (because remember, there is no grass here) but it absorbs so much water that it crowds out the other plants. It's all over here: yards, interstates, street landscaping, railroads, and beaches.

In fact, it's even growing outside my bedroom window. It's surprising how it can remain alive everywhere considering San Diego only gets 10 inches of rain per year, but that's also why most plant life survives by sprinkler systems here. To keep the stuff surrounding our house growing, I get to listen to the sprinklers spew on at 2:30 every night. It still wakes me up nearly every time, and the first time I heard it, I could not figure out what the terrible hissing noise was! I thought for sure someone had poured water in a hot frying pan right outside the window. Still, the air outside is too nice to keep my window closed. We haven't even turned on the air conditioner. 

I always have trouble keeping myself from buying yet another plant. I'm really going to have to find a house, with a garden, and stay put so that my mother doesn't have to keep plant-sitting my ever-growing collection. The plants are always so small when I get them though...

I found this little thing at the international food market, for only $1.29. How could I resist when it already has an eggplant growing?