it's raining cats and dogs!

Not really, but it sure feels like it. I'm in the middle of my first tropical storm, what they call a tropical depression. That means it's been raining for a week straight now and tomorrow it's supposed to pick up again. The wind has been nuts crazy strong and I've never seen so much rain in my life! Luckily, my little bure is holding strong. I've lost a lot of my roof but no leaks... yet. And yet, life goes on as normal. Except that I do have a litter of puppies that keep coming to me for refuge from the storm. I can't help but take pity on them they're just so small and cute! And flea/pest infected, sadly. I feed them sometimes and let them stay in my kitchen (which is outside and really just where my stoves are) out of the rain but they really want to come in and snuggle! If they were clean, I would totally let them. They're just so helpless.

There's not really anything new to report, we've just been staying in. Things are finally quieting down in the village after Christmas. I've done a lot of cooking, trying out new recipes. Some things I've made that were good include: mango jam (during mango season, people kept bringing me armloads full of them! I whipped up some yummy jam in no time and shared it with a bunch of families, some thought I had bought it), a pumpkin risotto which actually was more like pumpkin risotto soup even though I didn't have Parmesan or parsley, samosas, Spanish rice, boiled eggs (I'm trying to recreate a salad I love at the Old Fashioned and at Culver's with hard boiled eggs, avacadoes, almonds instead of walnuts, blue cheese (a splurge), pumpkin seeds, tomatoes) and calzones... I'm perfecting my tortillas/roti making skills as well as my pancake recipes (mostly banana pancakes, of course). I made gulab jamun which sort of turned out. I'll need to try that one again. Pretty much everything I make has eggplant in it; eggplants grow really well here and there are plenty of them. There are also a loto f pumpkins so I'm experimenting with them. If anyone has any advice on drying/roasting the seeds, I'd love to know. It's avocado season and I'm trying to eat as many as I can, but I don't really know what to do with them honestly, except make guacamole but trying to have ripe avocadoes and tomatoes at the same time is a little tricky. I just watched "Waitress" and I think my next project will be pie. But where to find a pie pan? is the first question.

I really apologize about not getting any pictures up. I'm honestly trying at every computer/ internet place I go. I think something happened on the camera end that's not allowing me to open the files on the computers. Once I figure it out, I promise pictures.