Cosima Underwater

… around my house, shot with a macro lens. Click on full screen mode to see all the tiny bits.

Call it female intuition, but I knew that Dubai would not be home. Looks like we are out of here very soon. It wasn’t love at first sight, and it wasn’t love at second sight, but I am grown up enough to know that it was partly my own fault that prevented Dubai from taking a place in my heart.

Most people here don’t see it as their home, and that is part of the problem. It is a place to make money. It is a transient place. Most people don’t care enough to make it a better place. To those who do, you have my utmost respect, and I wish you success.

Here is what I loved about Dubai:

1) M., the cat. I will try to bring you to HK. It will not be easy. It will be expensive. But you meowed into our heart, and I will try to make sure that your bowl will always be full to the end of your days.

2) My garden. I wish I could bring all my plants to HK. I know it’s folly to water a garden in this kind of climate, but to care for paradise for a year was heaven.

3) The friends little man found. Little man wants to return to HK, because it’s his home. But he wants to take his two best friends from Dubai with him. I am trying to convince their parents that HK is the place to be.

4) The Indian bread baker in Satwa. Sir, I can taste that you love what you do, and in the queue in front of your tiny store, I could see that we are all one people.

5) It’s shallow, I know, but I fell in love with a Bavarian beauty. There were a lot of dicey situations on Dubai roads, but you always brought us home safe. I hope you will bring the same kind of luck to the people who will drive you next.

6) The Thai fast food restaurant in Ibn Battuta Mall. Your spicy shrimp-bean stir-fry made my stomach leap with joy. Little man loves your shrimp balls. Thank you!

7) Ms. J, I know that you went through hell, being a mum myself. Loosing your child is the worst you can experience. Please know that you made a difference to those who you cared for. You are a marvelous teacher, and I wish you happiness.

I don’t know if you will understand, but I am afraid of returning home. Paradise is were you imagine it to be, and I hope HK will come close.

This post is best read at home an hour before lunch time.

The human mind is at its best when limited to a few ingredients. We don’t cope with infinity that well (I at least). The items available at 11 am were a hungry stomach and green beans (cheap and looking good at the supermarket yesterday), a can of chopped tomatoes (something that I always have in my cupboard), and three beef sausages (from a package of six of which three were wolfed down by little man yesterday).

So I chopped up two small onions and four cloves of garlic to get going. Then my eyes fell upon the blue cast iron casserole I bought at Ikea a few months ago and had never used. It looks exactly like the fancy French casseroles on offer for an insane amount of money, because they are called “Le Creuset”… mine was way cheaper (and I am always drawn to kitchenware that is so heavy that is can double as a defense weapon). What do you cook in a casserole you have never used before? A leftover-stew of course.

I don’t have pictures, but you don’t need them because you have leftovers in your kitchen too, and your tummy is hungry and your mind is racing already. What could I cook for lunch today?

I prepared the green beans for cooking. Fired up the gas stove, heated oil, threw in the onions and garlic, waited until their aroma wafted through the kitchen, then added the can of chopped tomatoes and the beans. Then I added a glass of water, some salt, two dried chilies (because hot is always better), and two bay leaves.

There was not enough fluid in the dish, but an open bottle of red wine in the fridge. In went some wine. You can never go wrong with some wine, especially if you are cooking with a fake “Le Creuset” casserole.

So leftover-stew a la Ikea was well underway, when I thought of the five miniature potatoes that were leftover from a bag of full-sized ones. When I got them out of the fridge, my eyes feel upon the glass jar of foie gras house guest had bought at her stopover in Paris. The proper foie gras is long gone, but the jar still held some leftover goose fat that your doctor tells you to throw away, but is far to fragrant not to use.

I cooked the potatoes in salt water. Chopped up the beef sausages and fried them in goose fat (yeah, I know… cholesterol… heart attack…bla… bla), then added them to the casserole.

When the beans were cooked but not mushy and the sauce had reduced to a yummy goo, the potatoes were ready as well.

There was still fat in the skillet from the goose fat and beef sausage bonanza. If a heart attack, then a proper one. So I fried the potatoes in the leftover fat to yummy crispness.

Lunch was crispy, fragrant potatoes and bean-tomato-sausage stew with a glass of red wine, and it tasted especially good because it was half-hazardly thrown together.

Do you have one as well?

Ficus Elastica

I had one on my balcony in Hong Kong. When we moved in it stood there in a dirty gray pot, desperately hanging on to life. The family that had lived in our flat before us had left it behind. I hope it is still there. I couldn’t take it to Dubai.

I also planted one in my garden here. I figured that what had survived minimal care on my Hong Kong balcony also survives the desert summer. And so far it does. It’s not as fashionable a plant as an orchid, but whatever survives under my thumb has my respect.

I have seen them as big as this

and develop beautiful aerial roots like this

But this…

http://rootbridges.blogspot.com/

…was new to me. Amazing isn’t it?

I find it a beautiful allegory for life. I know that I have tried holding up fragile constructions.

A couple of days ago, I opened the newspaper and saw the following:

The artist is Hyungkoo Lee of South Korea, and “Lepus Animatus” and other comic skeletons of his making can currently be seen at Basel’s Natural History Museum (?!?) in Switzerland. The museum did an anatomical reconstruction of “Canis Latrans Animatus” (aka Wile E. Coyote, RoadRunner’s nemesis), and found out that Hyungkoo Lee has done a very accurate bone job.

Bugs Bunny is dead :(