Blue Heart Journey: March 2013

Last weekend I went to the market to purchase my meat for the month of March. At the end of every month I plan a tentative menu for the following month. This helps a great deal to ensure my husband and I are having a variety of foods and not over indulging in the heartier meals. My grocery list included 6 lbs. of ground turkey. Not bad for the month!

I went to the market that morning with two other ladies who are both pretty fluent French speakers. Everything is served and made in kilos here, not pounds. On my grocery list I wrote 6 lbs / 12 kilos and that is what I told the girls to relay to the butcher. They told him we would pick it up after we came from the other end of the market to buy fruits and vegetables. The butcher looked at us with sort of a weird smile before he took off to the back room. The girls and I must have spent no more than 30 minutes buying our produce. My bag was starting to touch the ground from all those heavy fruits and veggies I packed inside.

We returned to the butcher and he gave me the receipt for everything. It read 6000 dinar. That's approximately $76. I thought to myself, “That is pretty darn steep for 6 lbs. of ground turkey.” Then the man came from around the corner with two large and extremely heavy bags of meat that he placed into my hands. My mouth dropped! All three of us thought wow, that’s a lot of turkey. While the other girls were getting their orders I stood there for a few minutes thinking something wasn’t right. The girls thought the man must have misunderstood the amount of meat they requested. I looked back at my grocery list and showed the girls the number I wrote on my paper. Well don’t you know this is why I will NEVER be an accountant and quickly changed my college major from business to communication after taking my first Statistics class! 12 kilos does not equate to 6 pounds. 12 kilos converts to 26.5 pounds! What the heck???? I was now carrying damn near 27 pounds of ground turkey in my bag. I couldn’t believe I switched the conversion around like that. 1 kilo equals 2.2 pounds. I was relieved that I actually had enough money available to purchase the meat. Otherwise, we may not have made it out of that underground market safely. They were going to get their money one way or the other. To top it off I also ordered 20 chicken breasts for the month. I purchased more than usual since I was hosting a farewell dinner for one of the Marines the following day. With the weight of all the meat, fruits, and veggies, I could barely carry those bags out of the market. I actually pulled a muscle in my left oblique on the way home. I learned a valuable lesson - I should never be responsible for helping our future children with any type of math problems.

This is what 26 pounds of meat looks like after I individually wrapped each pound. Two pounds were already removed for me to prepare turkey sausage patties. My husband was not upset, but would have been much happier if that were 26 pounds of beef on our kitchen counter opposed to turkey.

As my fellow New Yorkers would say, “It has been a minute since my last blog post!” A little over a month is a while for me. I realize we are already a week into March (better late than never). Although I didn't fit in time for blog writing over the past several weeks, I am proud to say I have been hard at work on my goals. It feels so good to be productive and see results!!! Anyway, back to this post. February flew by. Aside from working hard at my goals, I did keep busy doing a few other things last month.

First there was the Super Bowl. In order to watch it live Douglas and I stayed awake from 12:00 a.m. to about 4:30 a.m. local time. I usually enjoy checking out the new commercials aired during the game. Unfortunately, I would miss out on that since AFN (American Forces Network) only shows their usual wacky commercials. Any service or family member who has ever deployed knows exactly what I’m talking about. I’d like to know who approves these commercials and is there any screen selection done prior to picking the so-called actors. Before I digress further, while Douglas watched the Super Bowl for obvious reasons, I watched it to see the spectacular Beyoncé do her thing in the halftime show, which she did so dang well! Her performance was electrifying. Every time I watch her dance I just want to get up and start moving, although I can hardly shake it, drop it, and pick it back up like she does. My knee brace won’t allow for all that movement…LOL (Yes, I had the nerve to blame it on the knee brace. Don’t judge me!)

On February 8^th my girlfriend brought me with her to the grand opening of a jazz club/restaurant. We got all dolled up, excited for a girls night out. When we arrived to the club it looked sort of like a museum from the outside; it was large with a cobblestone entrance. There were just four or five other vehicles in the parking lot. She said it started at 8 p.m. and it was almost 10 p.m. when we arrived. Our initial assumption was that we were early birds. The name of the place was Club Casif. When we got inside one would have thought we were there with the key to open the doors, being the only guests present! It was just us, the staff, and the band. So we sat down and figured more people would arrive shortly. From the appearance this did not look like your normal jazz club. It looked more like an official “get your dance on” club. The atmosphere presented itself to be enjoyable and spacious enough for a couple hundred people to fit inside. The band members and manager must have felt obligated to entertain their only guest so they sat with us at our table. Then each one of them proceeded to pull a cigarette out of their pockets and light up directly in front of us. We were now surrounded by a circle of smokers. I whispered to my friend, “With every puff we are becoming victims of secondhand smoke.” I absolutely hate the smell of cigarette smoke. After a few minutes, or what felt like hours, the gentlemen said they were going to perform and asked if we would watch. I thought to myself, “Well, obviously we’re going to watch you guys. What else would we sit here and do? Surely not continue to breathe in the aftermath of your deadly habit.” We followed them into the next room, hoping more people would show. Otherwise, this performance would make us feel like a judge on a show such as America's Got Talent determining whether or not these contestants were good enough to make it. The next few minutes would be quite interesting.

The band was pretty good. They played their hearts out. My friend and I were most surprised that the lead singer sang like a true blues artist. Who would have thought that Algerian man had such a strong voice in him? At the end of each song my friend and I smiled and clapped loudly, showing our approval for them to move on to the next round of competition. I knew I would feel like a dang judge. After all, we were their only source of feedback and they looked directly at us after each tune. The thing that really perplexed my friend and I was the three DJs that were set up behind the band. Why do you people have three DJs up in here? First off, the club just isn’t that big to even require two DJs. Second, there are only two guests in here so you other two guys need to come have a seat in this bootleg audience and pretend like you are guests for the remainder of the evening. Third, you all didn’t even practice how this three DJ setup was going to work. They were cutting off songs left and right. And I think one guy was just moving discs around to look busy. I didn’t know what was going on, but I was floored!

Once they played for twenty or thirty minutes it was apparently break time. Again the band members crowded around us with their lit cigarettes. Algerians smoke often and everywhere. It’s no wonder they have tremors during the month of Ramadan. They can’t bear to go five minutes without their cancer sticks. At this point I was done. There was no way I could endure another round of inhaling death with every blow of cigarette smoke from the mouth. We made something up and told them that we needed to go, but reassured them that they were great and would make it on the season premiere! We thought maybe since it was the first night a lot of people had not heard of the place yet. To our surprise one of the staff members told us this was their third week open. Clearly Algerians and Americans have different definitions for “Grand Openings.” This was no grand opening when it has been open for three weeks and clearly we must have different definitions for what we call a restaurant because this place didn’t serve the first piece of food - not even a chip or piece of candy. There was a bar, which doesn’t constitute a restaurant. It was a good thing neither or us went there planning to eat. They need to revamp their advertising and maybe then they will receive some business. As we exited the club I thought to myself, “I could have saved this dress I put on for another occasion.” At least these experiences make for good blog stories. (Always a silver lining...)

Next was Mardi Gras. My girlfriend is a Louisiana southern girl who always starts Mardi Gras off right by throwing down in the kitchen on Fat Tuesday. She decided to have a dinner at her place for ourselves and all the Marines. My job was to make a Sausage Cheese Bread Roll. I’d never eaten this before or heard of it, but I love trying new dishes. I made a gluten-free roll and a regular roll. This country does not carry the main ingredient in this dish, but fortunately I came up with my own recipe to make sausage. It was actually pretty easy and tasted delicious!

The following week was Valentine’s Day. Neither Douglas or I wanted to dine at a restaurant this time. We both wanted to stay home and indulge in food items that I prepare once in a blue moon while watching a new movie. We had macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, and oven roasted zucchini, tomatoes, garlic, and onions. And of course for dessert, we enjoyed the white chocolate treats my husband gave me as a surprise. I can only eat such goodness on rare occasions, but white chocolate is my absolute favorite.

Oven roasted zucchini, squash, and tomatoes. It looks so pretty.

Towards the end of the month Douglas and I went out for a date night. We dined at a Turkish restaurant called Le Bosphore. We have been here several times before and always walk away satisfied. One of our favorite things at this restaurant is the cart of appetizers that the waiter brings by your table shortly after arriving. You can choose from an assortment of dishes to go with the basket of large pieces of bread served. The kitchen is similar to that of a Japanese restaurant as it’s placed in the center of the dining room. You can see how everything is prepared. After dinner we stopped at a small gelato store to get a couple scoops of ice cream. The Algerian ice cream here is not good, but this gelato was shipped in from Italy and tasted just like I remembered while visiting Italy. Overall, it was an excellent date night.