Happiness is finding something you thought wasn’t available

One of the few consumable items that I’ve been missing since leaving the UK is squash. No, not the vegetable, the drink. For the uninitiated, squash is a concentrated liquid that you dilute with water to make a flavoured drink (e.g. orange, lemon, lime etc.). There are some liquid concentrates on sale here but they look really syrupy and tend be strange flavours.

Since drinking beer before noon is frowned upon 😉 I’ve been missing a soft drink that can be consumed in quantity. The options we’ve had in our fridge up to now have been water (boring), Diet Coke (I can only take so much caffeine and gas), Gatorade (sugar-tastic!) or orange juice (expensive and still quite sugary). So, we’ve been keeping our eyes open for a good alternative.

Miri returned triumphantly from Econo the other day carrying a small container called “Tang”. Inside were 3 small tubs of orange powder. “I found you squash!” she said. According to the instructions you just add water to make an orange flavoured drink. To say I was slightly skeptical would be a huge understatement! 🙂

Anyway, we mixed it up and I was pleasantly surprised. It really does taste ‘orangey’ and not artificial at all. Very reminiscent of orange squash in fact! Each small tub makes 2 large pitchers worth, so its economical too. Best of all its sugar free! 🙂

 

New Year in Bristol, UK

In the past I’ve often had a problem with New Year’s Eve. Everywhere is way more expensive than normal and the ‘pressure’ of having to have a particularly outstanding night often makes it an anti-climax. In the last couple of years I think we’ve got it right though…

Last year we sat on our roof here in Rincón watching the fireworks, which was pretty special as it was our first year on the island.

This year we saw in the New Year with our friends Stu and Ellie at their house in Bristol. It was a very pleasant evening spent eating curry (of course!), drinking wine (at least in my case) and catching up with our old friends. Midnight saw fireworks being set off around the neighbourhood and a couple of house parties spilling into the street for “Happy New Year”s all around.

Me with young Robbie

Stu puzzling with Jim

Group photo from new year’s day

 

Last weekend in the UK

Our flight to PR (via JFK) leaves Monday evening so this is our last weekend in the UK.  As we monitor Hurricane Dean (now a category 4!) passing south of Puerto Rico, the weather here in the UK is typical for our summer this year:  rainy, gray and a tad chilly.  I am seeing some signs of blue sky, so hopefully the weekend will not be a total wash.

By now, we have gotten used to the abundant echoes in our house.  Today, our fridge and washing machine (as well as our wine glasses!) are being picked up by a local woman who bought them (and a whole load of other assorted items) a few weeks ago but considerately let us hold on to these essentials until our last few days.

Chores for today: Last visits to the local library, bank and post office.
Treat at the end of the day:  Curry with friends!!!!  🙂

We are now sans broadband.  Boy I hate dial-up!  I feel like a fish out of water without my constant internet access!  But, as Nick wisely points out, this is good preparation for what is to come.  We will not have internet access when we move into Casa Hardy (we won’t even have a phone…).  Hopefully, we’ll get hooked up fairly quickly but we will be operating on ‘island time’ so we are both resolved to be patient (no laughing!).  Fortunately, there are a lot of cafes in Rincon that offer free wireless access so I’ll be able to simultaneously feed my caffeine and internet fix.  Nick is a lot more excited about the beach bars with internet access…  🙂

 

Family Farewell Party.

Last week end, we traveled out to Somerset in the West Country by train (see previous post…) for a farewell weekend with Nick’s family. The weather cooperated  quite nicely, and we enjoyed spending a few sunny days (and two chilly BBQ nights) with the family.

We were given a thoughtfully prepared ’emigration kit’, including various humorous items such as packs of English Breakfast Tea, a jar of English rain, mosquito repellent and ‘his’ and ‘hers’ ponchos for braving tropical storms. A touch of foreshadowing perhaps? We realize that August is prime hurricane season but were a tad miffed to discover that tropical storm Dean is building up speed and making its way west.  It is still too early to forecast how Puerto Rico will be effected.  Needless to say, Tropical Storm Dean: Wunderground.com Tracking Map is my home page for the next few days!  Keep your fingers crossed for us and everyone in Puerto Rico!

 

House clearance: Going…going…gone!

As we are not shipping any of our furniture, we have been quite busy over the past few months ‘lento pero seguro’ (slowly but surely) getting rid of various items.  Thankfully, the couple buying our house wanted to buy a good number of items, including our bed, dining room table, stove…and our garden chairs!  But, there was plenty left to get rid of.  Through sales to office mates, friends, success on ebay and online ad posting sites, we were in pretty good shape going into the home stretch of our house clearance efforts:  the ‘estate’ sale (aka a ‘garage sale’).

I was surprised to find out that, here in the UK, folks are not big on garage sales.  In the US, garage sales are a very popular and frequent.  Here, they are not!  Despite a door to door drop of over 200 leaflets, we had a somewhat disappointing turnout.  But, to our delight, we sold our two largest remaining possessions:  Our trusty Honda Civic and our sofas!  Various local charities happily relieved us of everything we did not manage to sell.  See?  The living room is empty!

 

And then there was naan.

Of course, what good is an excellent CTM without a fluffy naan for dipping purposes?  Yes, you guessed it.  Naan was also on the list of recipes to master.  Numerous recipes and cooking techniques were tried before I threw in the towel (and the not so fluffy naans).  Bottom line is that a good naan requires a tandoor oven: a high-firing, clay lined oven.  Well, given that we do have an acre or two (well, two to be exact) of land, we decided that building a tandoor oven is clearly the way to go.  Some quick internet research, and we found a number of prototypes by fine folk who clearly cherish a good tandoori chicken and, of course, a well fluffy naan:

How to build your own tandoor from a flower pot

Oil Drum Tandoor

Super Duper Tandoor Oven

Finally, I’m happy to report an exciting and suitable epilogue to our curry quest.  We were up in Birmingham this weekend to visit Nick’s niece Ruth and her boyfriend prior to our big move.  Of course, we went to a curry house for dinner, as Birmingham is known for great curry (and, these days, going out for dinner IS going out for curry!).  It was a lovely spot called ‘Blue Mango’ — very posh indeed.  They had an open kitchen set-up which meant that I spend a good amount of time trying to spy on the activities in the kitchen, and especially the naan making process.  Fed up with my rubber-necking, Nick finally suggested that I should just go up and ask to watch.  Didn’t need to be told twice…  

Once I expressed interest in the process, the restaurant owner invited me into the kitchen to watch up-close!  Oh heaven!  I picked up a tip or two about the naan making process but mostly, I was just thrilled to see the process firsthand.  It was really something to actually see the chef expertly stretch out the small balls of dough and plop them using his bare hands onto the sides of the blazing hot tandoor oven.  The small pillow traditionally used for this purpose (the oven get to about 400c cooking a naan in less than 3 minutes!) lay dejected and unused to the side.  Exciting stuff!  Yeah, I know, I need to get out more…  🙂

 

 

An Ode to Chicken Tikka Masala

From mamtaskitchen.com:

“Chicken Tikka Masala, or CTM as it is known in short, is one of those dishes that was invented for British palate by an astute Bangladeshi chef. It is said that when a customer in his restaurant was served Chicken Tikka, a well known Indian dish, he complained, “where is my gravy”? The chef called the dish back to the kitchen, just fried some sliced onion, ginger, garlic, added a little of tinned, condensed Campbell’s Cream of Tomato Soup, a few more curry spices and sent it back to the ignorant customer. He loved it and Chicken Tikka Masala was born! Perhaps this customer was on to something and was not as ignorant as described in the Chicken Tikka Masala folk lore! Many chefs like to lay claims to have invented this, UK’s most loved dish, but there is no evidence to support their claims. ”

Regardless of its source, Nick, true to his English heritage, is a full on CTM boy.  We discovered to our slight dismay that there are NO curry houses on the west side of Puerto Rico.  In fact, the nearest Indian restaurant is in Condado, a suburb of San Juan (a mere 2.5 hours away…).  And no, I don’t think they deliver.  Looks very nice though and there is a CTM on the menu so we’ll be checking it out:

Bankok and Bombay

There is also an Indian restaurant in Old San Juan (Tantra), which offers a ‘fusion Indo-Latino’ menu.  Hmmm….  We’ll keep you posted!  

Of course, the lack of a good curry house simply means that I will be kicking up my own curry cooking activities and dabbling (to Nick’s great joy) in some non-low fat, cream laden creations.  In preparation for curry exile, I decided to do my best to reproduce an authentic curry house CTM.  Oh how naive was I…  I discovered to my great dismay that there are dozens and dozens of ‘authentic’ CTM recipes.  Ineed, a 1998 survey by Real Curry Restaurant Guide of 48 different CTMs found the only common ingredient was chicken.  Given that CTM is not a “true” Indian dish, its ingredients seem to vary depending on each chef’s source of original inspiration (no, not campbell’s but authentic recipes such as Murg Makhani).

Through trial and error (and liberal experimentation with my arsenal of spices) we discovered that the main ingredient Nick is partial to for full CTM bliss is coconut in some shape or form.  So I cannot report success as of yet, but I’ll keep you posted.  The next recipe I plan to try is by Chef Manzoor Ahmed of Tabaq Restaurant South Clapham, London CTM of the Year 2002 as voted in the Best in Britain Awards (BIBA).  But if you happen to have a tried and tested recipe, do let us know!