My birthday was about a week ago. I remember my first birthday be being hard. I'd only been away from home a few months and really wished I had my family and friends to celebrate with. I honestly can't remember what I did last year. This year's birthday was relaxing. It happened over the Easter weekend and since the office was closed it felt like having 3 Saturdays in a row! I was able to catch up on cleaning and laundry without feeling so rushed. I also finally got around to painting my kitchen. Linda will be so proud when she gets back to Morogoro and I tell her! The paint color was a definite mistake. It's called Fireball and I'm not really sure what I was thinking when I bought. I bought it last year and between being busy, tired or not having water on good days to paint the project kept getting put off. I remember showing Sue the color before I bought it because I wanted a second opinion. We talked about how now was a good time to experiment and try something different but we both must have been a little crazy to think a dark reddish orange color would work well in my tiny kitchen. The color is starting to grow on me but at night my one pathetic little light struggles to work well. Last night when I was washing the dishes I had to give up because I couldn't see the pots well enough to tell if they were clean! After Linda has a chance to look I'll probably head back to the paint store and start over with a much lighter color.
I've also had the opportunity to try out some new recipes. Since I'm pretty much housebound after dark and it's dark between 6 and 7 year round cooking helps keep me busy. I been trying new recipes with pumpkin and beans since pumpkin seems to be in season and there are always lots of beans! If anyone has good recipes to try please pass them along. Anyway I found a great pumpkin taco recipe. It was really good and I even served them to 2 Tanzanian friends who liked them. I think they were surprised they liked them too since tacos isn't a normal food here and many people seem to eat the leaves from pumpkins more than they do the actual pumpkin.