even more like home

Although I sometimes hate myself for it, our home here seems extremely luxurious - far fancier than our homes in New York and Philly. But our apartment is too big, even for four adults. It seems as though the only design criteria for the place was simply: As Big As Possible.

Because our kitchen is so gigantic, it used to be a somewhat difficult place for cooking. It has relatively little counter space, and I would resort - as I did in New York and London - to using the microwave as a pot stand or the floor as a an extra dish rack. So Peter, because he takes excellent care of me, commissioned a local carpenter to build us a kitchen island:



Having the island made our preparations for Saturday night's dinner party easy. Again we went to the fish market, and bought two large fish. Apparently, we bought two mullets. Here I am, looking both pleased and terrified by the fish.

Peter carved the mullets into several huge fillets, and again we had a feast of sweet, firm fish. Amazingly, we found red bell peppers at the market - banged up for sure, but the woman selling them cut off the bad parts and sold them to us at about $1.30/ pound.

For a starter we had some freshly popped (on the stove!) popcorn, and for dinner, we had grilled fish with a spicy pineapple chutney, grilled red peppers, roasted plantains, and a thai-style cabbage/grapefruit/peanut salad. Homemade mango ice cream for dessert. (Ok, the ice cream didn't exactly freeze, so we had very cold, chunky mango milkshakes.) I have to say, it was pretty damn good.