Date Day

After almost twenty years of marriage I'm happy to say that we still enjoy time we get to spend together. Our school break hasn't been a clean break since Rusty was busy preparing for Antioch's family camp, and we kept our classes going at the house. Even though Rusty will probably go back to the schools later in the week, we had Monday all to ourselves. We didn't have to hurry home either for evening classes.

We started the day at the King's Project store. We have tried to find this place before, but we were on the wrong road. Today we made it with just one wrong turn, and I think I can do it by myself should I need to. It was so easy--this time! Apparently we arrived at a good time as they were unloading the fresh produce. The king's project does a lot of research into growing new fruit and vegetable varieties. It encourages farmers to switch from producing opium to high-value cash crops, and it benefits the consumers as it brings in often exotic produce at lower prices than the imports. The foundation is constantly researching new varieties to introduce, and right now they have figs, peaches, raspberries, apricots, avocados, macadamia nuts, rainbow trout, rabbit, and coffee to name a few!

Here's my haul including the honey. The honey may have been watered down so I'm a bit bummed about that, but the honey business here is not 100% pure. I didn't know to check the bubble movement, and mine floated to the top quickly.

Our next stop was the old mall for a bowling match, but first we had to have a bit to eat. We decided on Sizzler again since they're still running a good special. Anytime we can both dine at Sizzler for less than $11.00 I'm going to take advantage of it! We then bowled three games where my score got progressively worse. :)

We left the hot bowling alley, stopped for a lemonade from Auntie Anne's and headed off to another mall. There are Rimping stores in several areas of the city, but this particular store had a wide selection of cast iron pans from France and the USA. I had finally decided to spend my birthday money on a reasonably sized Dutch oven and a Lodge skillet if I had enough. Yes, my birthday was back in July, but it took me a long time to decide what to do with the money. And yes I know I live in a foreign country where decisions are usually made very quickly to buy something because it probably won't be here tomorrow. And yes I failed. There were just a handful of cast iron skillets left all from China. As a consolation prize I could have bought this:

although with a $350 price tag, I think it was probably a wise decision to keep walking.