Travel 2012 - A Look Back

In less than 24 hours I will be packing up the car and driving North to the land of America. I usually do a little look-back post, rather than a look forward post. I've never been one much for resolutions anyway...

2012 was a year 'on the move' with not so much travel as usual as I saved up my pennies to move to Mexico, but there were still a few highlights to share.

Let's see, it all began in Lincolnshire, England, but I don't have pics of Lincolnshire. So I'll start with Cairo in January 2012, one year after the start of the revolution.

In January & February I did a bunch of trips with the school National Honor Society to Wadi Degla and the Khan-el-Khalili. The Khan is one of my favorite places in Cairo, and going with my students had me seeing it with new eyes.

Following a quick trip to Baltimore to process paperwork, next it was off to Petra in Jordan - a dream of mine since I found out the closing scenes in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were filmed in a real, actual place!

From Jordan, I flew off to Istanbul: a city I fell in love with on my first visit in 2009. It was even better this trip!

In May, for my roommate's 30th birthday, there was one last trip to Luxor to be had - with a visit to Abu Simbel and a stay at the super-posh Cataract Hotel.

At the end of June, it was time to say goodbye to Cairo, and all my wonderful friends and students, and head off to Florida with my cat in-tow.

a home-made gift from my clever students

A few weeks in Baltimore again, then back to Florida before moving to Monterrey, Mexico!

From Monterrey there have been three trips (maybe I did more traveling than I thought):

Merida, Quintana Roo, Mexico

South Padre Island, Texas

Cancun / Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico

... and before the year is out I will have been back to the states, by car, which means driving across the Achafalaya Basin for the first time in 10 years! (It's the part of the drive I am really looking forward to!)

Still, Trip Advisor is telling me I've only been to 14% of the world, so there's clearly still many adventures to plan!

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Slow-Cooker Sundays

One thing (among many) that I could not get in Egypt was a slow-cooker. I used my big, fancy Crockpot in Baltimore on occasion, but because it was so big I could rarely finish what I made. I would end up delivering portions to Momom and Pop or inviting over friends, which was awesome, but impractical for every-day cooking as my crazy travel schedule for work didn't often allow for delivering left-overs.

In Egypt, with my time much taken up by a long commute and friends over a few nights a week, a slow-cooker would have made my life much much easier. Unfortunately, I couldn't find one. Even post-revolution, when suddenly a larger variety of kitchen gadgets became available, I could not get my hands on a slow-cooker. It's not to say there were no slow-cookers anywhere in the country, just that none of my local merchants carried them and I would only dig so deep among Cairo's back-alley variety stores in my quest.

Long story still rambling on (sorry!) I bought the very first slow cooker I saw in Mexico. It's small with only two settings (high and low) and is a wonder. Now, every Sunday is "Slow-Cooker" Sunday. (Although on the occasional weekend, like yesterday, the slow-cooker is used on Saturday as well).

Today, like last Sunday, I am going to simmer a no-cream-yet-so-creamy Butternut Squash Soup. Yesterday, I slow-cooked boeuf bourguignon. Previous Sunday slow-cooker simmers have seen experiments in pork, tomato-jalepeno chicken to be stuffed into poblano peppers with couscous, acorn squash soup, etc etc.

The pork recipe is almost there.  It just needs a little something more, a flavor profile I'm missing. (Probably it just needs salt). The butternut squash soup has produced the best results so far (possibly because it involves an entire bulb of roasted garlic); and the stuffed-poblano peppers are a work in progress, I'm just not cooking the peppers long enough. May need to pre-roast, then stuff.

I always thought slow-cooking was for lazy cooks, but no, many of the recipes take more prep-work than my usual cooking. Right now, I have a bulb of garlic and two squash roasting away in the oven, which will need to go in the blender with onions, spices, and stock before hitting the pot. However, the mingling and melding of flavors in the pot as they swirl and bubble for hours is a pay-off that makes the hour of prep-work worth it.

I've been meaning to keep track of Slow-Cooker Sundays here since they started, but have been far too busy with school work (Sunday is not only Slow-Cooker Day, it's also Catch-up-on-Grading Day, Planning Day, and Take-a-Walk-Outside Day), but now is the time. I think Slow-Cooker Sundays will have it's own little page, because my slow-cooker deserves to be honored, revered, and praised. Hooray for the slow-cooker - ever may it cook without gas or supervision!