Prairie Hike

We had a beautiful prairie hike before the rains and snow hit this week.

Looking to the east from a high butte.  Tessie explored as hard as she could, saying (I'm sure) "This is the most GLOOOO-RIOUS day of my life!"

Twilla, on the other hand, is not high energy. We were a long ways from her couch. She still had fun, but it was probably not the most glorious day of her life. (She is a glamour girl stuck in a redneck world. Very trying...)

Loved the feeling of being on top of the world!

See those little white buildings off in the distance?  That's the shop, my in-laws' house and garage! We spent a lot of time looking for distant buildings, like the pellet mill in Jordan, which you can actually see from this point!

You're going to get plant pictures. That's all there is to it. Everything is about to turn grey and tan, so I am soaking up the little bits of color!

Angus found big mounds of clay and would climb up on them to make clay balls which he DESPERATELY wanted to chuck at someone, but no one would let him. Shocking.

I'm always fascinated by the lichen on the rocks. Isn't it stunning?

And the currant bushes echo the same colors...

A muddy, gunky, yucky little reservoir to swim in!  Talk about stinky dogs after this!

A whole day spent with Dad, just exploring, is a big treat.

Oh! Check this out! My Gramps used to tell us to always look at anthills because they excavate all sorts of things like Indian beads and shells. This little anthill had a couple sea shells...see the white one next to the ant? I was kind of astonished that my camera was able to focus and clearly shoot this.

I think sagebrush is beautiful.

We found another reservoir and the kids went to frog hunting. 

See the little swirl in the water? That's a frog. Angus totally missed them, and was dejected after half an hour of amphibian-less efforts.

The sand rocks are sculpted by the weather; rain and wind hollow and shape them, unlikely artists but faithful. 

We always look for initials and carvings in the rocks. It's irresistible, scraping one's name and date into these stones! I don't know who P.M. is. Nature is wearing away the details...

The grasses are graceful in their last days, aren't they?

The Farmer found a wee pile of purple glass and porcelain chunks scattered in the grass. 

I always wonder about who lost precious things out here. And they WOULD be precious, because it would have been so very far from any town, hauled out by rough wagons or carts. 

On our way back home, we checked salt'n'minral and jumped a little bunch of mule deer. This picture was taken from the moving side-by-side Honda and is not the best.  The deer were in good, fat condition and they didn't run very hard.  

COWS!

We stopped to look at tipi rings, too, but the crew was pretty played out by that point.  It was hot. We were dirty. The dogs smelled. The tween girl was barely able to tolerate another minute with her brother and mother. 

So we went home. 

Today it's cold and wet and grey. There's snow in the air and we're pulling out the winter clothes, sadly. I'm grateful we had a day of sunshine together before this hit!

Happy Hunting

 Hiding Easter eggs in Cohagen is tricky. Prairie grass...if there IS any....is short and sparse. There are no bushes, shrubs, trees, or big rocks to tuck the treasures in, either.  This causes the eggs to look as though they were broadcast in a big general scatter...

Granted, these were hidden for the little-littles, but still...

 Three on an ant hill. 

Here they come!

The littles were released first, and they took no time at all in scooping up plastic eggs.

The big kids were given the option to help hide eggs this year, and help the little-littles find some. This was a great plan and they all had such fun! (Two of the more enthusiastic Easter bunnies, here.)

It looks much colder than it actually was; I think it was 42 degrees and no wind as we were hunting eggs. Barely cold enough to have to wear a coat, but they humored the adults anyway.

  Do they come any cuter than this?!?!

I love the Montana prairie stretching out behind these kids...

Big boy bunnies...(the skull and crossbones cap helps the swagger)

These two have been the best of pals for 3 or 4 years! Hannah calls Maggie "Iggie" and they seek each other out at every Cohagen event.

Iggie and Hannie

Okay, THESE two are so dear that I almost can't stand it.

They cheerfully opened some eggs so I could get a picture of the loot. 

Counting eggs to make sure they were within legal limits. (Before the hunt began, they were told they could only....ONLY....gather 23 eggs. Can you imagine?! ONLY 23. My head hurts at the thought of that much candy in a child.

The hat.  That hat is KILLING me. He wore it like that the whole time, and managed to gather up quite a clutch of plastic eggs. (Maybe it kept him from being distracted by other things, I don't know.)

I think we ended up with something like 30 kids, counting infants and preschoolers. Such a good bunch for our little school!

The Farmer's Wife Abroad {Food}

Ah, the food...

Bonaire can grow nothing, save goats and iguanas (both of which are edible...), so all the food on the island is imported. 

And imported = expensive. 

Especially when an island is importing the vast majority of their food products from the Netherlands. A lot of the produce comes from South and Central America, which saves a few miles, but other than that, the Netherlands.  

I kind of knew this, but I didn't KNOW this...does that make sense? 

I had read about the grocery stores and markets, even watched a couple videos taken by a tourist who was shopping in Van Den Tweel's in Kralendijk, but it didn't occur to me that the labels would all be in Dutch. I was more focused on staying within my grocery budget and still feeding everyone enough so that we weren't forced to kill and butcher a goat, say...

Since I don't really know any Dutch, this made grocery shopping quite slow.  I looked at the labels, thought about what the English equivilant of that word might be, examined the picture or product quite carefully once again, and put it in the cart.  Sometimes I hit it, sometimes I didn't.  

I wanted half & half for my coffee but all I could comprehend was "melk"...obviously "milk".  But the rest of the cartons gave me no clue as to their contents. And the smiling cows on them seemed to mock my ignorance...

I bought karnemelk. 

Who knows?! Karnemelk might be part milk with the other part being cream...oh, I hope, I hope...

NO.

Karnemelk is buttermilk. 

A terrible lesson in Dutch at 6 a.m. in my coffee. 

(I used it later in seafood fritters and it worked out neatly, so no waste.)

There was also a section of what appeared to be shelf-stable coffee creamers with happy Dutch people sipping hot beverages on the label. (And the label did NOT say karnemelk anywhere on it, so I thought "Who knows?! It might be creamer...oh, I hope, I hope")  

NO

The happy Dutch citizens had evaporated milk in their coffee. Not even sweetened condensed milk, but just plain old evaporated "melk".  Why were they so ecstatic about THAT? 

The fruit was amazing. 

It was tricky, though.  It LOOKED green, especially the pineapple and mangos.  It FELT green. It didn't smell like ripe fruit generally smells. But when I'd cut into it, it was perfectly ripe...if I let it sit on the counter for more than a day it would begin to be TOO ripe very quickly.  

Cheese....oh, God bless the Dutch and their happy cows who make happy cheese.

I have no idea what kinds I bought, but they were all good. (This is not surprising, since cheese is one of my favorite food groups.) 

I stayed within budget very well, so Thursday Ivan gave me extra cash and told me to get shrimp and steak for supper that night. I'd been shopping all week at three different supermarkets and knew the pickings were slim in the beef department and the shrimp looked a little old...what to do?  Warehouse Grocery (which was not a "warehouse grocery" like we're used to; Costco and Sam's Club...it was a regular old supermarket) had good steaks that day, but I was not paying for anything with a bone. With careful picking, I ended up with 3 loin cuts that ran $47/lb.  At Van Den Tweel's, I found some not so gross shrimp that was pre-garlic-ed for $34/lb and several pork skewers (at least I THINK they were pork skewers...or goat, but we're not going to split hairs now) for $30/lb.  When I returned with my haul and brought it into the villa, Ivan said, "You didn't get enough!" to which I pointed out the prices on the receipt and we agreed that everyone would have to fill in the gaps with rice and salad...

Merrill, the owner of the villa, had told me where I could go for fresh fish....catch of the day!....so I was determined to get my hands on some of that.  It was a rather strange connection as I had to call the front desk of a hotel, they'd put me in touch with the kitchen, we'd wrangle out a deal and I'd go home with whatever they caught that day. 

I called the Sand Dollar and sure enough, they said they had fish and to stop by the office to make the deal. 

Hmmm...

Well, it took me a little while to find the office because it was tucked way in the back of the resort, far from the entrance and parking lot. When I finally found it, I was hot and flustered and frankly, not in the mood to haggle over any old fish.  The front desk clerk listened to my story, picked up the phone and negotiated a deal with the kitchen for tuna steaks (enough for six) for $22.  When did I want to pick them up? Um....in an hour, maybe? No worries, the fish would be there in an hour. 

But, in true Bonairian spirit, the desk clerk (Mercedes- pronounced mar-SHAY-deez) said I could get it whenever...she was there all day, even over lunch when the sign said they were closed, and just swing by when I was finished marketing. I wanted to hug her. 

When I got the tuna back to the villa, I carefully unwrapped the newspaper and then the plastic wrap.

There were the most beautiful, huge pink chunks of tuna I'd ever seen....about an inch thick, mostly. It was almost intimidating, thinking of grilling such perfection! 

But I managed it...salt, pepper, lime juice...it grilled like a dream, and paired nicely with the fresh mango salsa I made that afternoon. 

I really wish my group had liked fish better, because I'd have been at the Sand Dollar every morning, chatting it up with Mercedes, picking up barracuda or what have you.  

Here's the supermarket I used most often. (I'm not ashamed to tell you...it's because as I went out the door, there were insanely yummy, fresh smoothies made of just blended fruit...no yogurt or anything. $2 bought a go cup of heaven.) 

The thing about ALL the supermarkets on Bonaire is that you had to bring your own bags to carry your groceries out with. (Presumably because they were eco-sensitive and couldn't handle the amount of trash the other plastic/paper bags would add to the island.) (All the trash has to be hauled OFF Bonaire and away, so the residents use everything up and recycle as much as they can.)

At Van Den Tweel, you also had to rent a shopping cart. All the carts were chained together outside. In order to take one to use, you had to push a quarter in a little slot which released the chain from the handle. When you returned the cart, you pushed the chain back in the handle slot and out popped your quarter.  Neat, huh?! I kept a cart quarter in Bonnie's cupholder so I wouldn't have to dig around in my pocket or purse each time I went. 

STROOPWAFELS!!!

My favorite Dutch thang. 

These were my breakfast every morning after this purchase...along with koffe, sans karnemelk.

(See the shopping bag? You can't believe how many groceries those hold! It's the lugging them up the stairs to the kitchen that's the trick...)

Australian house wine, which was mostly chardonnay as the label indicates, but packaged with Dutch labeling...

I loved that the Oreos (black and whites) had the description in Dutch, French, and Italian!

With a name like "Smaakt", it has to be good! (I think chickpeas in a tomato sauce, I'm not certain.)

Cornstarch was allesbinder. The baking soda was found among the cleaning products. And I had to go to two other groceries to find baking powder for my fritters. (No one bakes, there! It's too hot, and the air conditioning is room by room if you can possibly afford it, so all the baked goods are bought in the markets. And there are precious few ingredients to use if you want to do it yourself.)

I spent quite a lot of the grocery budget on fruit juice, which really was quite good and that Jaspers consumed in vast quantities. (I don't blame them a bit. Toward the end of the stay, I was drinking more of it, too, and I'm not a juice drinker!) The juice came in boxes like you'd buy chicken stock in here, and the only way I could guess at what juice was in the box was by the pictures. If I didn't recognize the fruit, I didn't buy the box.  

One of the things I started doing later in the week was to watch other people's grocery carts if I heard them speaking Papiamentu or Dutch. They knew the good products and produce! The best time to shop if you wanted to avoid crowds was in the afternoon before everyone got off work and the other folks were laying low trying to stay cool. It was wonderfully air conditioned in the supermarkets and I took my time doing the Dutch Label Lottery game. Sunday morning was craziness...I think everyone got out of church, then zipped by the stores to get something for lunch.  

I haven't even touched on the food in the restaurants!

YIKES!

There'll be a second food post, I'm afraid...