Send me your recipies for my cookbook!

August 9^th

I now understand why people used to live at home until they got married young and had a big wedding with a gift registry – because buying all the things you need to set up a first home is expensive! I'm going through piles of papers and magazines in my house and have started compiling a number of recipes for dishes and desserts that I'd like to try when I get home. All of these of course call for basic kitchen implements that I realize I'm going to have to collect from scratch. While I can certainly feed myself adequately with a pot, a frying pan, a spatula, a serrated knife, a cutting board, measuring cup and spoons, and dishes, many of these dishes call for things that are slightly more complex and I really would like to be able to make something fancier than my all-in-one-pot meals that tend to revolve around beans and rice and some type of sauce or mix of spices. It's getting dull. I think longingly of my parent's kitchen, with at least 2 of every specialized gadget you could possibly want – baking pans in every size and shape, waffle and panini presses, stirring spoons in various sizes/materials/slots, a nice heavy duty cuisinart mixer with attachments, pots with steamers and lids and different depths. Even making a list of what I would consider to be the very basics looking at the recipes I want to make just seems to be getting longer and longer. Time to hit creigslist and the estate sales Mom keeps talking about!

In work news, I'm pretty much done with my stack of papers, having separated out things I'll be using in the next 3 months, set aside personal things I want to take back to the US, and organized and labeled the papers that I'm leaving for the next PCV. I still need to print and add my Etude, both my and Lauren's DOS, a list of projects we both did, the PCPP for the library, and a general description of Kossouka, what to expect, what is and isn't available, transport options, etc.

I went to the CSPS this afternoon but ended up just keeping Djeneba company and counting out sachets of PlumpyNut for the MAS kids. We had one who came back from the CREN (a rehabilitation center for severely malnourished children with complications that can't be treated at the CSPS level) that we were supposed to enroll in the program but he was clearly very healthy, wasn't even close to being at all malnourished, let alone severely – he had fat rolls on his neck for goodness sake! But we had the referral sheet, Major wasn't around to override it, so we put him in against our better judgment. The upside is that we're at least doing our best to make sure he never gets put back in the program – after another 8 weeks in the severe program eating an extra 1500 calories a day of PlumpyNut and then 3 months in the moderate program receiving enriched porridge mix he should be very well protected against temporary food shortages.