Three times in March I made empanadas. Yup, I’m a fan now.
What are they? The term comes from the word empanar, meaning to wrap or coat in bread. You’ll find them in a number of Spanish and Portuguese countries. In Mexico, they can be a variety of things. I made one kind for dessert which was more or less fruit inside a pastry. It was similar to pumpkin pie, baked, but each serving is wrapped separately. These fruit-filled empanadas had plantain, raisins, oranges, and some spices.
I also make some empanadas de viejas ropas. I took a few pictures which you can see below. These are more or less meat mixtures (in this case pork with chillies, onions, etc) wrapped in a corn tortilla. Let me tell you, it smelled like a Mexican restaurant in here. Squeeze on a little lime, dip it in some salsa and I bet you can’t eat just one. Here’s my most recent attempt, from Sunday. Not a professional job, but they still tasted good!
Making tortillas with the tortilla press
Empanadas with filling inside
Frying the empanadas
The finished, hot empanadas
(although you can eat them cold too)
We had a great time yesterday at the South Calgary Chinese Evangelical Free Church. I was happy to have the chance to give the message, and join in the worship. We’ve been there a few times now – it’s just down the road from our church, and we’ve enjoyed it each time. Everyone was very friendly, and it’s always obvious that a lot of prayer and seeking God’s direction has gone into the service.
I even had the chance afterwards to talk to a couple of people about the internship program, called InVision, coming up this summer in Mexico. I think this is one of the most exciting opportunities in Latin America right now, so it was great to have the chance to talk to someone about it.
By the way, there’s also a girl from the team I was with last summer (remember Meximize?) that is planning to go on InVision. Please keep her in your prayers as well, as she prepares to share with her church family on April 9th about how God is leading her.
Anyway, we left the SCCEFC with hopes to come back soon and maybe spend a little more time. I almost didn’t get the chance to speak – I was filling in for the pastor who ended up being there anyway. But it’s always good to see him, so if he didn’t mind the break we’re all happy! 🙂
So once again a friend of a friend had some free tickets, so Shari and I went to see the free skate in ice dancing at the World Figure Skating Championships. It was a good day to go – the best skate of the night was by the Canadians – Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon. They had the best performance by a decent margin, and overall became winners of the silver medal. Gold went to the Bulgarians, and Bronze to the Americans.
I’m throwing a few photos online, but our little camera had a hard time getting anything too spectacular. 🙂 Check the ice dancing news news here…
Oops – we just got a phone call from someone else. Sounds like Shari and her sister might be off to the exhibition tomorrow. Nice of people to think of us! 🙂
I swung by today to do a few website updates of various kinds. There’s been a bit of a website theme in life lately, as I’ve been trying to do a few things on mine and help a few people with theirs. And my friend Tim helped me out too, by sending me a new logo for my headache website – check it out. He’s not only a pastor, but a graphic designer – can you beat that?
Here at Finding direction, you’ll notice the addition of a picture to the right. I bit the bullet and updated our Gallery software, and now it’s more or less integrated into this blog. That should make certain things a whole lot easier when it comes to posting updates here. And in the case of this website, easier and quicker are words I like to hear, because it means less time at the keyboard! Now you should be able to see here when the photo gallery is updated – one less place you need to check. 🙂
You’ll also notice a funny little bunch of words way down the main blog page on the right. That’s a tag cloud. It shows graphically what topics are most talked about here, and you can click on a word to see all posts on that topic. It’s like the categories, but more…organic. Most of the bigger topics are categories, since they’re included. More words will be added automatically as the months pass.
Offline, we’ve had some great visits with friends over the past few days. Coming up will be more of a family theme, with visits to and from aunts and uncles and grandparents and nephews and nieces. There will also be a church theme, as I will be speaking at the South Calgary Chinese Evangelical Free Church (about 15min SW) this coming Sunday. Then over the next few weeks we’ll be at Cremona Country Fellowship (about 1 hour NW), and also at Maidstone Baptist Church (about 5.5 hours NE). Check our Yahoo! Calendar for more details.
I know, you all want to know if I’m done my course. The answer is still – almost. With some unexpected things coming up and some poundings from migraine attacks, I’m a little behind. But Lord willing I’ll be sending off my last assignment on Wednesday, and writing my final exam a few days later.
Just when we thought things were slowing down, it looks like our week is packed with activity. But tonight Shari got invited out to see the men’s qualifying free skate at the World Figure Skating Championships. How cool is that? So tonight, it’s the kids and I – I’d better run (and I’ll keep on running ’til they’re in bed)!
I came across these little pages written by my grandparents. I don’t know what they’re from – looks like a book of some kind – perhaps they were autographing each others’ something or other. Anyway, this would be before they were married. It’s encouraging to come across little things like this and to be reminded of a godly heritage.
The quotation from my grandmother, Isbell, was from a poem by Annie Johnson Flint (see Isaiah 43:2). You can read the rest of the poem, When Thou Passeth Through The Waters. The second is a Bible verse – Philippians 3:7. The writing is small, but you can click on it to see a larger copy in our Photo Gallery.
Here’s a tale of two cities.Mexico City and Calgary have many things in common, and many differences (perhaps the most obvious being that Mexico City is like 30 times bigger!). But there’s one difference that has been fascinating me over the past few weeks – employment.
Calgary is entering a crisis – simply too many jobs and not enough employees. The other day we got a full colour flyer in the mail, inviting us to come over for some free food to discuss employment opportunities.
Another restaurant is attracting employees by offering a $500 bonus after 3 months and an all-inclusive trip to Mexico after 1 year! (This is a new Mexican restaurant, by the way – we’re looking forward to it. There are more and more opening up in the city).
It’s been this way in Calgary for years to some extent. I boasted to someone that they could come to Calgary one day and be working the next morning, and sure enough they were (with decent pay too). But things are getting worse as the boom continues, and the "now hiring" signs go up on every corner, and even at retail outlets wages are rising. Businesses that are on a time line with borrowed money are worried they won’t be able to survive (or at least make the money they wanted to!).
Of course, a worse crisis is going on in Mexico City. It’s the opposite problem – lots of workers, and not enough work. While in Calgary we are finding ways to keep seniors in the workplace, in Mexico people our age would likely be out of luck finding work. Yes, if you’re over 30 you’re over-the-hill in the young, energetic work force of Mexico DF. At a time when you’re trying to pay for your family’s needs, you may find yourself with no income at all.
That means that businesses in Mexico are happy because they have their pick of the cream of the crop. More unscrupulous employers lure workers with false promises of benefits, knowing that if they lose one person they can easily find 100 more.
Mexicans use amazing ingenuity to find work. If you’ve been to Mexico and see the people selling things in traffic, you know what I mean. For the tourist, it makes Mexico the greatest shopping place on earth. But many of these people with no benefits, and really not enough to survive on, are a day from disaster. I’ve seen statistics saying that 1/2 to 2/3 of the population is unemployed or under-employed.
