The Great American Road Trip: Days 108 and 109

After such a long drive on Wednesday, I was happy that my drive on Thursday involved just heading 45 minutes north to Pompano Beach! Shannon was the Burkina Country Director for Peace Corps for all of my service save the last few months, and besides seeing her as my supervisor I also got to know her as a friend. She still works all over the world but I got lucky and caught her on a rare week when she's in Miami. I didn't have any particular plans, so Shannon invited me to join her on a day of shopping and planning for Christmas. I've never thought about how people have different "shopping styles", but it was nice that both of us are the kind of people that tend to have a general idea of what we're looking for, go to find it with just a few detours to check out things that catch our eye along the way, and then go on our way onto the next thing on the list.

Have you been to one of those movie theaters with the fancy reclining leather chairs? Or one of the ones where you can order food to be delivered to your seat during the previews? Imagine a place where you get the best of both! We went to iPic, the theater in Boca, and I think it was the most luxurious theater experience I never could have imagined having - these folks in Florida are on to something. Not at all something you would do on a regular basis, but once in a while? Reclining back in a huge comfy chair complete with blanket and pillow, enjoying drinks delivered to our seats while watching Frozen - it was a pretty awesome way to end the day! And the movie was really cute, I loved Sven the reindeer ;)

One of Shannon and my shared favorite activities in Burkina was baking, so of course we had plans to make Christmas cookies! We slept in on Friday, then started plotting our plan of attack. Butter and eggs out of the fridge to come to room temp? Check. Holiday cookie cutters and sprinkles? Check. Flour, 3 kinds of sugar (regular, brown, powdered), flavor extracts (almond, peppermint, vanilla), nuts, dates, 4 kinds of chocolate chips (dark, white, cinnamon, mint), and every mixing bowl available? Check. Ready to go!

While the sugar cookie dough was chilling we took a walk along the boardwalk, watching the fishermen on the pier and the birds that were stealing their bait. We walked back along the beach, stopping to look at the blue-legged jellyfish (!) that had washed up on the sand - the surfers were still out in the water but everyone else was admiring the waves from the beach. We stopped in to visit Shannon's Aunt Jackie, who generously welcomed us and was able to answer all of my many random curiosities about beaches and tides, and sent us home with grapefruits and some delicious chili that we enjoyed for lunch. After lunch, it was back to the kitchen!

After a few hours of steady mixing, rolling, and trading baking sheets in and out of the cute, efficient (but tiny) 1970s oven, help arrived in the form of Audrey and Chantal! Fellow Burkina volunteers, these two had gone above and beyond by volunteering to help train my training group, even staying on in Burkina for a third year by taking their village experiences to new jobs working in larger towns. They got back to the US about 2 years ago, Audrey just graduated from her masters program and is working at the University of Miami, and Chantal was working all over Africa for an NGO and is now in graduate school in Berkeley, CA - I just got lucky that we happened to be visiting Miami at the same time. :) It was such a delight to see them, and they willingly let us put them to work dipping Russian tea cakes in powdered sugar and frosting the sugar cookies. Anne joined us after work, and after dinner we sat around talking and frosting cookies until almost midnight!

Final cookie count:
Sugar cookies (frosted and decorated)
Russian tea cakes (with almonds)
Russian tea cakes (with almonds and dates)
Pinwheel cookies (chocolate peppermint)
Pinwheel cookies (chocolate vanilla)
Biscotti (with dates, dark chocolate chips, and almonds)
Chocolate chip cookies (mint, dark, and white chocolate chips, with oats and coconut)
Chocolate chip cookies (cinnamon, dark, and white chocolate chips, with oats and coconut)
Whew!

Gnome in Crate and Barrel

Gathering ingredients

All of the holiday sprinkles and most (but not all) of the butter we used

What a nice view, especially while doing endless dishes...

Lesson learned - when you want crushed peppermint candy? Use candy canes, not round candies - the pink center gets super sticky and you end up with a very large clump of solid peppermint in the bottom of your blender

These birds always make me smile

Surfers enjoying the waves

Seagull

Look out!

I remember fishing with my uncle from a boat, putting live bait into a special bucket with a hinged lid and lots of holes so that you could put it over the side into the water when you were stopped so that the little fish would get fresh water. I've never seen buckets quite this big or dropped quite this far down to reach the water!