To New Beginnings

As today is Rosh Hashanah, and I am currently visiting my dear friends in Glasgow, Kelly and Dave, who are the proud new parents of a beautiful baby girl, I thought there could be no better time to start the blog that will document my adventures this coming year. (I hope--let's see if I can keep up with it this time--this will be one of many resolutions per usual!)

So just what are my plans? Still quite unclear, and I'm enjoying that fact! I do have a flight to Uganda booked for Sunday, September 16th, arriving Monday, September 17th in the capital city of Kampala. I will be staying with my cousin who lives there and works for US AID, and hopefully beginning to teach art & crafts at Meeting Point, a Ugandan NGO consisting of an orphanage and school serving a very poor neighborhood, including many displaced people from northern Uganda, at which education, vocational, and health services are provided for HIV-infected mothers and widows, as well as their children and orphans.

That's the brief run-down. Obviously there is much more to know, but unfortunately, I do not. Hopefully I will get a ton of information upon my arrival in Kampala and will hit the ground running.

So what am I doing right now? I left on Saturday evening from Washington, DC for London, although it turned into a Sunday morning flight thanks to a shutdown of all Virgina Atlantic airline's computers worldwide. Luckily, our flight was not canceled, and the VA staff diligently checked all passengers in manually. I arrived at London Heathrow safely and, even better--with both of my meticulously packed bags (thanks to sheer maternal brilliance), one being my huge new backpack, and the other, one chock full of art supplies for my future art students!
My brother, David, was kind enough to trek out to Heathrow and help me with my bags, and I'm not quite sure what I would have done without him, as evidenced by the picture here. And he and Nora were also kind enough to host me for the week--I am one lucky girl.

Since then, I've been wandering the streets of London, watching random British television, crocheting a baby blanket, eating some terrific food, and trying to not go broke in my first week abroad--not an easy feat in London!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070912/ap_on_re_eu/britain_costly_eating

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FOOD
Nando's:
This is technically a South African "fast food" chain, but boy, does it put our American fast food to shame. You order at the counter and they bring the food to your table when it's ready, and the setting is actually quite nice (at least at this location), with wooden tables, high ceilings, and rustic chandeliers. The specialty here is the chicken. The menu board claims that the birds are marinated for 24 hours. Then they are dosed in a delicious blend of spices, peri-peri, that can be served at mild, medium, or hot levels. Apparently the hot really is seriously spicy, so we opted for the medium, which definitely makes your lips tingle, but doesn't destroy your taste buds for the night.
Now my brother is a big eater like me, and Nora can hold her own as well, so we packed away quite a bit of food. Following an order of olives, complete with whole garlic cloves (I think I consumed 4), two orders of six peri-peri chicken wings and one 1/2 chicken was delivered to our table. Each main dish came with two sides or a salad, so we opted for one salad, an order of chips (Brit word for French fries, and good ones at that--so crispy but still very potatoey on the inside), coleslaw, roasted corn on the cob, and garlic bread. The only side dish we missed was the spicy rice, but we had quite enough spice as it was. The chicken was delicious, very juicy and flavorful with a nice black spicy coating on the crisp skin. Even better, there are several different dipping sauces to add even more flavor to the chicken, which while totally unnecessary were really quite good. The wild herb flavor was my favorite, while the garlic and hot varieties were a little to "bold" for my tastes, but I am very attached to my taste buds, so that's just me.There was nothing but a pile of wing bones before long, and the sides were destroyed as well. To top it off, because who wants to walk home when you can roll, we had a small dish of toffee crunch cheesecake and an order of bottomless frozen yogurt. I went back twice, and would have gone back a third time--with Nora's support--but David was getting embarrassed.
Nando's gets high marks in my book not only for the quality of the food, but for it's "cheap" prices. What does cheap mean? Well, a meal for three set us back 38.50 pounds (i.e. about $80). Now that's a bit tough to swallow--and that really is "a deal" around here! But David also informed me that they have a Nando's in Kampala, so it's good to know there is already a sure bet that I will have food to eat there (not that that's ever really up for debate with me). Check it out: http://www.nandos.com/

Mem & Laz
This family-run Mediterranean restaurant is owned by the same people who run Levente's in downtown Washington and Bethesda, MD. The food runs the gamut of Turkish, Italian, French, Spanish, etc. Nora and I started with some delicious soft puffy bread topped with a tomato rub, and then shared two starter dishes: one of roasted eggplant filled with onions and peppers and melted fresh mozzarella served over a sweet tomato sauce, and a plate of three kofte (lamb patties) served over rice with a spicy tomato cucumber relish. Then out came an entree-sized portion of large mussels laid half-shell open on a plate while a white wine cream sauce. While I'm not used to them being presented this way, they were quite good. However, there were two different color mussels, one variety that was pinker, and upon composing a (very scientific) closed-eyed taste-test, were determined to be much sweeter. When we asked the waiter if they were two different kinds of mussels he said he'd check with the kitchen and came back to report that the pink ones were in fact males and the browner ones that were more chewy were females. Yep, we like the males better we agreed!
We also shared a delicious bottle of Sicilian pinot grigio, so we decided to forgo dessert and nurse our last glasses. All in all, Mem & Laz serves up European comfort food in a fun, cozy atmosphere.

Busabi Eathai
David was not impressed (that's an understatement to say the least), but I actually really enjoyed my dinner here. It's set up like a Wagamama's with communal dining tables, but the ones here are square as opposed to long rectangular ones, which I think makes the place feel cozier. The philosophy of the place is that all dishes are served at the same time whether they be appetizer or main course (they do not serve dessert). I ordered a mango lassi which was great, densely orange is color, creamy and flavorful. Then we embarked on our culinary adventure which was not perfect, but highly interesting. The appetizer we ordered was a fried peppery calamari. While David complained that it was not crispy enough, I though the large pieces had a nice bite to them but were not too chewy. Our main dishes consisted of a huge bowl of galanga lemongrass coconut chicken soup with greens and glass noodles, a ginger beef dish with peppers, and a thick massam curry with chunks of potato and onion, and an almost cinnamon-like flavor.
I think David, Nora, and I are quite spoiled by some of the Thai food we've encountered at Bangkok Gardens in Bethesda and Malaysian Grill on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so the soup seemed a sad runner up to the version at Malaysian Grill, and the others, while very good I thought, were not "best Thai in ages" memorable. But it's still a fun place, casual and "Brit cheap," and I think you'd like it.

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Now I'm in Glasgow hanging out with Kelly, Dave, and little Kenzie. We've been relaxing at home in Knightswood, continuing aforementioned crocheting (Kelly is knitting, we are officially 25 going on 80), and trying to figure out how we got so old so fast. Kenzie is a rock-star of a baby and is already outgrowing some of her onesies, even by day 6. And I even changed a diaper--small step for parents everywhere, giant leap for me! After a tour of Glasgow, and a spirited attempted to find a Rosh Hashanah service (I said a few prayers in the courtyard of a locked, but beautiful, synagogue), and a delicious trip to I.J. Mellis Cheesmongers Shop (you MUST go if you are here, samples galore :) ), we headed home to feast on the goods. Full from our cheese-gorging, everyone else headed to bed hours ago, and per usual, I'm still up--but this gave me a chance to finally get this thing started!

Back to London tomorrow evening, and then Uganda-bound a mere 48 hours later. The nerves are starting to kick in (just barely), but I'm also awfully excited.

Goodnight, and l'shana tova!