The Great Lemon SNAFU

Things in Kurdistan that are only funny if you speak English:

1. The local Communist party has translated their name into the "Kurdish Toilers' Party." We think they meant "labor" or "workers," but hey, maybe they're just trying to one-up all the other labor parties.
2. In the grocery store the other day, there were all these big metal containers marked "semen" in big capital letters. It took me a good 30 seconds of horror to realize it's a brand of olive oil. Then, of course, I was the tall redheaded girl giggling to herself in the middle of the store. Ah, well.
3. There's a local used car dealership that's actually called "Shady Used Car Dealers." Again, probably more true than they wanted!

So, to rapidly change the subject, today I decided, "hey, we have lemons, we have eggs - I'm going to make a lemon meringue pie!" All was going well, the ingredients were mixed, I apparently have a talent for making meringue, when I looked down and thought, "huh, this sugar isn't really melting all that well." I stuck my finger in to taste it, and found out that, contrary to my assumption, the unmarked tupperware container in the kitchen was NOT sugar. Oh, no. I had put 1 and 1/3 cups of SALT in my pie.

In case you were wondering, lemon custard filling is NOT something to which one can add salt and still have an edible end product. I have never tasted anything worse in my life, as far as I can remember. Imagine drinking a combination of seawater and lemonade, but in a semi-solid form. Revolting.

I wrote a note to our cook's assistant, asking if he'd bring eggs tomorrow (actually, since my arabic is limited, it said, "tomorrow, eggs we have? thank you.") so I can try again. Maybe I can redeem myself and make something that tastes good. On the plus side, I also made rattatouie and roast beef, and those were quite good.

This is what you do when you're all stuck in the house all day long - we couldn't even go to work today, we just sat around the dining room table with our laptops. Meanwhile, despite all the drama on the news, it was silent up here. Not even any sporadic gunfire, which isn't all that uncommon.

Also, if you've emailed me in the last few days, and are wondering why I haven't emailed you back, it's because my email is doing this lovely thing where I can receive mail, but can't seem to send it. Stellar.