Puzzling Pictures: Barbecue Pit or a Tub bath?

Creativity. This is how we roll in Malaysia!

Shout Out to Fractions!

Lessons learned today:

1. Never let your brain go on cruise-control even when using a tried-and-true recipe
2. Common sense and little red flags that go up in your brain are gifts from heaven. Pay attention to them.
3. Well, I think that's pretty much it.

Today I cooked for two different sets of folks. Why not double the recipe and just use half for one set and half for the other. Why that is an excellent idea, I think I'll do that. 

And why not use a well-liked recipe so that I know it will be a guaranteed good meal for all involved in eating it. Why that is another excellent idea. Let's do it!

So I begin preparing oven fajitas, a recipe I found on Pinterest. So far everyone has loved it. Awesome. Here I go. I start mixing up the spices that will be used to marinate the chicken. As I begin measuring out the various spices I say to myself,

"Hmmm, that seems like a lot of spices. I don't remember that...well, it must be because I have doubled the recipe. Yes, that's it."

A few spices later...

"Wow, that really seems like a lot. Well, I think I have more spices in the cabinet this time than I did last time. I must have skipped some of the ingredients last time. OK, I'll just keep on, I mean, I've made this many times and I know it's good."

I finally get to "Cayenne Pepper" which is one of the spices I did not have before. My brain is thinking about switching to cruise-control. My eyes register "8 tsp". Wow, that is a lot. I start measuring it out. Doubling the recipe, of course, will mean 16 tsp. Really? Wow. By tsp number 4 I think,

"Hmmm, that really is a lot." 

I dip my finger into the cayenne pepper and taste it, yep, it's pretty spicy. I think I'll stick with 3 tsp. I try to dig out what I can from the pile of spices I've dumped into the bowl to get the cayenne pepper down to a lesser amount.

Ok, marinate chicken. It's all in the pan and ready to bake. I double check the recipe for the amount of time to bake. That's strange. It's not on the recipe. I look it up on the internet site. That's when I notice the spice amounts are different on the internet recipe. When I go back to check the recipe I am using on Pinterest, I see that the TOP number of the FRACTION is way off in the left-hand margin, nowhere near the recipe itself. That leaves the bottom number over by the recipe. So instead of 1/2 Tablespoon of chili powder, for example, I read "2 Tablespoons". But I am doubling the recipe, so I dump in 4 Tablespoons. You can see then, that when I got down to the Cayenne Pepper (after dumping about half my spice cabinet into the bowl) I read 8 teaspoons instead of 1/8 teaspoon. That's a big difference Yo!

I look at the chicken. It is literally already baking under the heat of the cayenne attack. I think I hear it sizzling right there on the cabinet. My face burns. My hands burn. I glance at the guests in the living room. I think about the others who are innocently waiting for me to bring them a home cooked meal. This stuff is fire and I am pretty sure it's more spice than chicken at this point.

Hmmmm...

I rinse the chicken. I dump it all into a mixing bowl and rinse it. No joke it takes about 5 cycles before the water is no longer orangey-red and the spices are mostly gone.

Start over. Wow, it sure does look more reasonable now. 

1/2 teaspoon salt instead of 2 teaspoons (doubled to 4)

1/4 teaspoon onion powder instead of 4 teaspoons (doubled to 8)

You get the idea. Whew, I baked it and it turned out just fine.

Disaster averted.

Fractions are important y'all. Numerators are vital. You can't just use the denominator.

Lesson learned.

Way Back When

Way back when, I wrote this in my journal:

August 12, 2009
(A friend) asked me yesterday if I would write down some of my thoughts of my time here. Encouragement for new ladies here. It got me to thinking more and more about this "book" of mine. Lord, I want to keep placing this in Your hands. Would You have me print it quickly and cheaply for the ladies of (Land of Sand), or go through a self-publish? And of course, Lord, it's not actually written yet! I ask for the guidance, the inspiration, and the time to write!

***

About a year later I had written Villa in the Hilla and our generous home church made 200 copies. By then we were in Texas and I mailed about 100 or 150 of them to "The Land of Sand" but they floated around the world in their cardboard box and ended up back at our house in Texas! So then friends had to hand-carry the books in. By then I'd discovered the beauty of Amazon's Digital publishing as well as Createspace which is where they also publish hard-copy books. By then we'd given away all 200 copies, so this was a new and great way to continue distributing.

The goal of Villa in the Hilla has always been to get it out to people who wanted to read it. Amazon helped us do this. So, as most of you know from recent posts, I made it a free download for five days. I am happy to report that Villa in the Hilla was downloaded 997 times! I am so happy!

I am hoping that anyone who likes it will also check out the next book Cottage in the Kampung. It is also a devotional book but is about Asia rather than Africa.

Free Just A Little Bit Longer

Villa in the Hilla FREE

Villa in the Hilla for Kindle is free on Amazon until May 25. Download it today if you haven't yet and pass the word! You can get your free copy here.

Also, check out this little video.

An Open Letter to the Wall Lizards in My House

Dear Cicaks (wall lizards) in My House:

I don't see you around a lot, but I know you are here. By the amount of poop you leave on the floor, you either have huge parties at night while we are sleeping, or you have serious digestive issues. Either way, I'd like to bring up a few problems that I see with our living arrangement.

You have never offered to pay rent and that is OK with me. I've never asked you to. But I feel it is very reasonable to ask for you to earn your keep. When I see mosquitoes in the house it is proof to me that you are not doing your job. If you want to hang out on our walls, please eat our mosquitoes.

Secondly, I would like to discuss your toilet habits. Poop stuck on the wall leaves stains. Please don't do that any more. Please find a location outside to do your business. I know you go outside at some point. I know this because there are more and more cicaks coming to live in our house. So you either leave the house at some point, or you are sneaking on my computer and tweeting my address to wall lizards everywhere.

And finally, I don't know what sorts of parties you are having at night, but when I find a tipsy cicak in the morning who can't even stick to the wall and falls splat on the floor in front of me...well, frankly it startles me and grosses me out simultaneously. It is just such an incident that has prompted me to write you this letter.

So, dear cicaks who live in my house: please...eat more, poop outside, and please please quit falling splat on the floor.

Sincerely,
The Folks Who Provide the Many White Walls You Live On

I Got a Face Lift

Well, not me. But "Villa in the Hilla" did! Thanks to a very talented friend. Now the devotional books match. Yay! 

Now here is the best news...Villa in the Hilla will be FREE for Kindle download for five days. Please take advantage of this if you do not have a copy yet (or if you do but you want this cool new cover). And tell your friends. 

Villa in the Hilla will be FREE for download on Amazon from Wednesday, May 21 to Sunday, May 25. Umm, that's give or take 12 hours depending on where you are while you read this. I think it will be effective at "the stroke of midnight" Pacific Coast Time so, you know, plan to download on May 22 just to be safe :)

Don't forget! 

It's Here!

I am happy to tell you that I have a new website! Go ahead, try it out...type www.janakelley.com in your browser...or just click this:

www.JanaKelley.com

You can even access this blog from there. 


(ummm, little disclaimer...you have to type "www" in the address until I can fix that prob. I was boss at getting the website all ready but not so boss at working out the kinks!)

Mother's Day

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all you mothers out there! 

First we went to church and spent some time in Psalm 119. 

Then we went out to eat at Chili's. Mostly because chips and salsa is one of my faves.

Kris and the boys gave me an iTunes gift card. Thanks guys! I used part of my loot to buy "Bella" which is a great movie that I think you should watch. The boys even watched it with me. It broadened their horizons. What do YOU think of the movie?

I did not get to talk with my mom or mom-in-love because that's the way it goes sometimes when you live in different time zones. But I am so thankful for email and iMessage, and for moms who understand why we are in a different time zone to begin with, even if we don't get to hear each other's voices much.

Happy Mother's Day! (Late I know. It has nothing to do with the time zone, it's just that I am a little rebellious and didn't want to post a Mother's Day post on Mother's Day because it seemed too cliche. And then I decided I should, but it was a day late...and also a work day which meant I didn't have time to put a bunch of thought into it but I thought I should do it anyway, so I did. Just now. While dinner is burning in the oven.) 

Throwback Thursday

I haven't figured out the whole social media scene very well. I do my best, but I am definitely an outsider (read why I feel this way). But it's Throw Back Thursday today, folks. I threw back yesterday though, so I was a day early. I found an external hard drive in all my stuff. I plugged that bad boy into my computer and found pictures and videos from 2005 onward. Wow, there went my evening. I spent a couple of hours throwing back. It was great!

The Lord has blessed us with some amazing opportunities and adventures and I am so very thankful. Today I re-watched some of the videos with the kids. They enjoyed it as much as I did.

Here's a picture (I won't make you watch all the videos, although I'd love to because they are really fun!) in honor of Throw Back Thursday...

On the Nile...just a walk away from our house!

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