Car Story

Survived the first round of exams! Woo-hoo. Also did stellar in Physio… the prof is known for making A students cry. (I made a B though.)

I think I’ve successfully learned how to cook. I totally love that I can get fresh real breadcrumbs here. Fried things never tasted so good! I donno why but I’d been craving dove stuffed with jalapeno and cream cheese, especially since they’re flying around here in mass. So I go to the store and settle for the next best thing: ye ole box of breast ‘frying chicken parts.’ I also bought a meat mallet to beat them with (tenderize). Thawed, I ripped the muscle from the bones and separated the pectoralis major and minor. The pectoralis minor makes for excellent chicken strips. The pectoralis major was pounded and then, in chicken cordon bleu form, some jalapeno strips were put in it. Then I took a wad of cream cheese and place it on top. The chicken breast was rolled up around said jalapeno and cream cheese, fastened with toothpicks and battered. I was able to make 7 and let them all bake in the oven at an unknown temperature for an unknown amount of time. Absolutely fabulous. I bought all the stuff for chicken cordon bleu and will make that in the next week or so.

Made mac and cheese to go with my jalapeno cream cheese stuffed chicken. With the botulism contaminated green beans from IGA, you would think I’d know better than to buy something on sale at IGA, but I bought pasta. Sigh, pasta plus chocolate colored pasta beetles. They float to the surface when you add water. I was very tempted to just pick them out and cook the pasta, like no big deal everything is contaminated with something, BUT since I had friends over, they out voted me and made me throw the pasta away. No one but me eats bugs I guess. I think this dates back to when I was 3 years old, sitting in the green chair, when my mom caught me eating a june bug. Crunchy.

So, car story that I had promised to tell: about 2 weeks ago I went to a friend’s house and my car started to smoke out the tail pipe. Never good, so I turn off car. Turn car on 15-20 min later and it’s still smoking. (This is the maroon one I bought for $1000US, while most cars that work are a lot more.) So I decide to park the car and come back when it’s light out. My island AAA is Ross security, so I call them and they pick me up to take me home. I decide to not check on my car (which I can’t lock) until after my test. (Imagine 3 or 4 days passing…) A friend drives me to my car after school. Only problem, car is GONE! I can’t even explain how my stomach was doing flip flops. I just couldn’t believe someone would steal my car, I mean why? It’s so ugly!

We started to search the road and finally found my car down the street and around the corner. Someone had just moved it (pfew). We’re on St. Kitts, that’s not so unusual. So I take the car to my Canadian mechanic at the Marriott and it was like a tiny valve cover thing in the engine that just needed to be replaced cuz the car had been sitting for a while. The local guy putting the car back together accidentally dropped the distributor cap (?) and broke it, so they had to order a new one and my car was MIA for about a week. The part they broke was free to me!

Next car story: so a friend of mine that now lives in the same building as me was living on the other side of the island. One morning she gets in her car and she hears a loud screech-boom-hiss and her car dies. She pops the hood and what does she find? A huge rat! In her engine! Half of it was over on one side, half on the other, and it’s heart had been ripped out of it’s chest was still beating like over on top of her battery. Eek huh!? This came up in conversation because I saw one of the large Kittitian rats get hit by a car the other day. Saw the same thing happen to a little mouse, but it ran off into the bushes rather than being grinded into the pavement like the giant land crabs typically are.