Lessons Learned

A very nice specimen - quite unlike ours...

As Ken was sitting at the auto shop waiting for work on the car to get done, a guy walked by selling shrimp. That was nothing unusual since we live fairly close to the ocean and we also live in Brazil where people are always selling unusual things on the streets.

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Ken glanced at the mechanic in the shop and the guy gave him a look that said, "go for it." These shrimp where an incredible price...less than $1 a pound. "Cool...well, then I'll take 2 bags (a kilo each)," and then proceeded to give the vendor a R$10. At this, the vendor exclaimed that he could give Ken an even better deal...he would give him the change (a whoppin' R$ 7) in shrimp. Well, ok, why not?

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As Ken was telling me how he aquired so many kilos of shrimp (the refrigerator door was having trouble closing), I recalled how something very similar happened to me in Israel with figs which I will not go into right now. Since my story didn't turn out so well, I decided not to say anything in hopes that his experience would be better than mine.

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Ken proceeded to contract Alicia to pull off just the heads to prepare them for consumption. She is very industrious and always glad to make a little extra money, so went right to it. At this point we realized how little these crustacean were. After cooking up the first batch it was discovered that there was 3x more shell than shrimp. I was needing a little extra fiber in my diet, but this was a little more than I had bargained for. We unanimously concluded that they were hardly edible in this manner, so Alicia went to it again and decided to take off their transparent shells. After 2 hours of hard work, she literally had only a handful of shelled shrimp to show for it. Not worth it. Just out of curiosity, Ken asked her to count how many little pink guys were in the next kilo she beheaded. Only 636. Did I mention that these were very tiny shrimp?

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Now for some creativity. Ken got out a meat grinder...yes, for real. The shrimp now looked like pink hamburger. I started dreaming up shrimp pizza, shrimp spaghetti, shrimp lasagna, etc. It all sounded wonderful, but after the first culinary delight of "cheese sauce a lá shrimp" we discovered that the shells, even though ground up, were just only neatly concealed and still managed to ruined the whole dish.

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Tomorrow we are going to take all those little containers of ground shrimp that are tucked away neatly in the freezer and label them "dog food". At the price we got them for it actually comes out to about the same price as real dog food.

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So the lesson for the day is:

The next time a street vendor tries to give you your change in produce, take your money and run, or otherwise you may have to suffer the embarassment of 4452 little tiny shrimp staring back at you every time you open the refrigerator door...not something I would wish on just anyone!

Stucky Family Reunion 2008

Three of the four Stucky families live here in Brazil. This past month the Dicks (Deb is a Stucky!) came to spend 3 weeks with the rest of us. Here are some of the highlights.

Hospitality...Priceless

Jericoacoara National Park...$ 75
Nose flute...$ 1.25
Tank of diesel fuel...$ 87
Hospitality...priceless

Pastor Brandão, his wife and a church member managed to feed all 16 Stuckys (+ the 3 of them!) on one giant fish.

There is nothing like honest-to-goodness hospitality. The kind where you stop in and feel like you have always belonged there. Years may have passed since the last time you saw each other, but it seems like it was only yesterday when you last walked through their door.

On our Stucky Family Reunion Trip this past week, the entire tribe (grandparents, kids and grandkids) went to visit some of the "stomping grounds" from 20-30 years ago. We stopped in and saw lots of old friends and even made some new ones along the way. Several families were courageous enough to have all 16 of us over for a meal! Great friends, great memories and great fun.

You Just Won't Believe This

What happened to this common,

household canning jar?

A. a random bullet flew through our house and managed to only break through one side of the jar.

B. someone was practicing with a glass cutter and intended to glue the "hole" back in but the Super Glue ran down into one spot and dried instantly preventing the glass "hole" from fitting back into it's spot.

C. The chemistry experiment using liquid blueing and acid, ate a hole right through the jar.

D. Ken was melting ink for his solid ink printer in the microwave and the glass heated up to such a high temperature that the jar actually melted.

Bingo! That's right...letter D. Never seen anything like it and probably never will again. Hard telling what it did to the microwave...

Do not try this in your own home!

Full and Overflowing

The Santa Cruz Dam

Yesterday a "bunch" of us tore out of here to go check out the newest dam built in our state because the reservoir is FULL. This is a sight that we don't often get to see. In fact, the last time it happened was 4 years ago. The dam project was completed about 5 years ago. At the time the engineers said it would take 7 years for the reservoir to fill up. With the incredible rainy season we had the following year, it filled up in 7 weeks!

This year we witnessed the water spilling over the top for the second time. In our semi-arid climate, water is a huge thing. Course getting it in a huge quantity isn't always the best, but beggers can't be choosers!

The "bunch" of us with the water roaring over the edge in the background.

Mossoró FLOOD 2008

A normally stagnate river has turned into a muddy, churning, mess.

Rain is highly coveted in our semi-arid region. In Mossoró we joke that the rainy season is 4 months long and the dry season is 4 YEARS long.

In all seriousness, the last time that the reservoirs in our region were full was 4 years ago. In this last month, they have all filled up to overflowing causing big problems in the towns downriver.

Houses nearly covered by the flood waters

Mossoró had it's last major flood in the 1985. Since then, another canal has been dug to handle excess water in an attempt to avoid future flooding of that magnitude.

Ken traveled this street connecting our part of town with downtown this morning.

We are wondering what things would be like without the extra canal. Even with this precaution, things have gotten pretty desperate. Already, a bridge on the federal highway about 30 miles away is threatening to collapse and many people in our city and the surrounding area have been forced out of their homes, including one from our church and several from ALPHA.

Just for a Chocolate Chip Cookie

I bought the 1 lb bag of these little guys...the colors are a little more "girlie" than I had anticipated, but once baked into the cookies, no one notices any more.

Friday afternoon I went downtown to take care of some business. When I got there, I discovered that it was impossible to do what needed to be done. So now what?!?! Instead of heading back home, I went to my bakery supply store and bought a pound of granulated yeast. Then I remembered a place where I had seen teeny tiny chocolate chips a long time ago. Was it Christmas time?

To make a long story short I searched and searched, but they don't "exist" any more (meaning "there are out of stock"). Bummer. By this time there was no stopping that irresistable urge to make cookies, so instead of chocolate chips, I decided on something similar to mini M&M's. These little guys are much more colorful and MUCH more available than chocolate chips.

Back home I threw open the cookbook and found a recipe. After noticing that the recipe was unusually large, I cut it in half and started throwing everything in the mixing bowl.

That's when I noticed something was not quite right. This was a special recipe to make a "mix" that you store on the shelf until you are good and ready to bake the cookies. Just scoop out a few cups of the mix, add eggs and vanilla and away you go!

Now what?!?! With everything in the bowl, I was already committed. Even a "half" recipe was going to produce a very LARGE amount of dough. Oh, my. What did I get myself into?!?!?

10 dozen cookies later, I finally turned off the oven totally exhausted. The girls were sure they had died and gone to heaven and the house smelled amazingly wonderful for the rest of the evening. I froze most of them in the hopes that I won't gain 20 lbs (you know...out of sight, out of mind) and that there will still be a few left two days from now.

Maybe it wasn't so bad after all. After the trauma of all that baking, Ken had compassion on me and took us out for supper.