Weekend

Apart from Mothers’ Day, the most notable events of this past weekend were the testing of the toaster oven’s suitability for biscuit making; oh, and my actually making it to a party. Everything I make in the toaster oven at the moment is an experiment because I have no idea if recipes for food cooked in regular ovens (e.g. conventional, fan forced etc that have doors that seal) should or could work in a toaster oven. The excitement of everyday life in Timor!

Julia very kindly assisted me in this endeavour, the most important part of which was eating rather a lot of the biscuit mix before it even made it into the toaster over. After the discovery that the temperature indicator is wrong (there are 6 division dots between the 150 degrees and 200 degree markers instead of five, so there’s no way to accurately measure any normal temperature used in recipes that ends in a 0 or a 5) and an initial burnt lot, things went well and we produced some very nice biscuits.

The little oven really got a workout as I lured Julia, Sally and Frances back later with the promise of passata (basically a tomato based vegie casserole), which is totally my new favourite meal to make. Partly because it is delicious and partly because all the ingredients are fairly common around Dili

And I’d like to record that I went to a party last Saturday evening. Yes. A real party, at some guy’s house, built halfway up one of the mountains that edge the south of Dili. The view was astonishingly wonderful – imagine looking out through colonial-style balustrades down a hill and out to the ocean at night – really, now I try to describe it, I realise it’s the kind of view that just doesn’t come out well when you try to describe it.

There’s little more I can say to illustrate how much I enjoyed being able to go out*, except to thank my housemate Angie for having the good sense to have a job where she gets a vehicle, and inviting me; and to record that a room packed with girls from probably ten different countries singing Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’ was truly one of the magical moments of my life. Ahh, 80s Madonna, bringing women from all walks of life together.

• since almost every other time I am thwarted by sickness or lack of transport.