Let them eat shortcake and feta cheese

Yesterday started as one of those "feeling sorry for myself" days. I continually struggle under the workload of this house - I could use a lot of adjectives before that noun... horrible, awful, horrible, awful, horrible... our house is wooden planks and plastic windows, and truthfully a lot nicer than the one we will have in the tribe because at least here the boards were sanded and plained before being nailed together, as Brant points out. But I hate living in a wooden house. You can see the ground through the cracks in the floor and the sky through the cracks in the walls. Hence, the dirt and dust comes in unabated. It is a continual battle with the broom against dust bunnies the size of Ezra and against the spiders and ants and lizards that think our floor cracks are their open door to our home.

Plus the electricity was off all day yesterday and the generator was out of gas, so by lunch I was hot and sticky and grouchy. So sitting at lunch, we listed all the things we were thankful about living here. My favorite was feta cheese... here on the edge of the world, in this back corner of a 3rd world country, you can buy feta cheese. Granted, not all the time and not at every grocery store, but occasionally you can find it - for less than what you have to pay in the States even. To me, feta cheese is the ultimate luxury item - it has no use or nutritional value other than making salads or burgers or whatever taste a little bit better. So, as we were enjoying our pasta salad with feta cheese, I thanked the Lord for such small luxury items as feta cheese.

Definitely put me in a better mood to remember my blessings, so I headed out to the (air-conditioned!) grocery store to try to procure some food for the week. Grocery shopping here is like a treasure hunt every week... you never know what will be available at the store. Surprise, this week they are out of flour! Hope you didn't need any... For months they have not had any butter, but this week the shelves were stocked with butter. No sugar though... I don't think they have had any since we have gotten here. Anyways, no matter what is on my list, it always take me an hour at the grocery store just to go up and down all the aisles and see what happens to be available this week. It is a good week if I come home with only 2 or 3 things that I could not find at the store; some weeks more than half my list is not available. (Yesterday it was raisins and cereal that were not stocked... we will be eating lots of eggs and homemade yogurt this week for breakfast!) But often times there are treasures to be found... once it was dried fruit from the States, one time I found my coveted feta cheese, and yesterday the treasure of all treasures... fresh strawberries!

Now granted, I had found fresh strawberries once before, about a month ago. The produce section had exactly four tiny cartons of them, and every one of them was moldy. Not exactly how I wanted to spend $4.50. But yesterday, there were actually several dozen little boxes of berries... all plump and bright red and smelling soooo good... and at the reduced price of $2.50 a box, I couldn't resist a couple boxes.

So last night, I made strawberry shortcake. I had left over cream from our ice cream making venture on the 4th and whipped up some biscuits and topped it with little red berries. It was fun to have dessert for no reason at all... the boys were so excited they were dancing all around. We played games together and ate dessert and let the boys stay up and were thankful for good times as a family... even on the edge of the world.