(Post 63 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)

As many of my long-time readers know, I have an intolerance to chicken eggs. Meaning eating a chicken egg won’t kill me, but it does make me feel ill. Chicken eggs smell rotten to me, which the allergist told me is a defence mechanism and proof that my body doesn’t tolerate eggs. A slice of cake made with two or three eggs is fine, mayonnaise or flan is not. I have completely cut out eggs at home, going to vegan blogs to find egg-free recipes for cakes, pancakes, pasta, and even things like frittatas and omelettes (hint: besan). But there is always a natural curiosity when you can’t have something.

Well, a few months ago, I was transcribing an interview with a famous Australian actress when she revealed that she had to eat an egg for a scene in her movie and that they had to use a duck egg because she is allergic to chicken eggs.

I immediately got on Google. Yep, people can be allergic to a chicken egg but be fine with a duck egg (and vice-versa) because they have different types of proteins in them! I got obsessed with the idea of trying a duck egg, especially fried and with a runny yolk to dip toast into. I thought duck eggs would be easy to find here. Jajaja! I struck out with all my contacts and finally went to the local food hunt group. Patricia at L’épicure gourmet, a treasure of a fine grocery store, said she had some!

I headed there this morning. This store is super expensive and you have to know what items are true treasures that are worth any amount of money and what are things you could find cheaper in a supermarket. So that’s why I spent $300 (about $18CAD) on two tins of UK Heinz beans… 😀

The eggs were very affordable, $4.5 each (about $0.27CAD). I also loaded up on yellow onions (so glad I have room to freeze them now!), Heinz chili sauce (apparently a very Canadian product), A1 steak sauce, and the last of their pastrami.

I came in and put together a proper fry-up. The duck egg was very hard to crack, kind of plasticky, and I got a couple of bits of shell in my pan.

Research told me to fry the egg in a generous amount of butter and then cover it with a lid to let it steam a little. I was surprised when I took the lid off that the beautiful yellow yolk now had a white film over it. Yes, that’s pastrami. I would not be so pedestrian as to have bacon with duck eggs. 😀

The first thing I noticed was that I knew I was cooking eggs, there was a distinctive “egg smell,” but it was not nasty. It didn’t have the rotten component to it. Fascinating.

First bite!

I liked the yolk on toast. There wasn’t much flavour, but it was creamy and rich and I knew it was very nutritious, high in the B12 and iron that I have a hard time getting naturally.

The white tasted vaguely like egg, but not repulsively like chicken eggs. I liked the crispy buttery bits the best. I think a fried egg might be a nice addition to a breakfast sandwich with the yolk running over everything. But I’m not particularly excited to try other methods of making eggs, like scrambled or poached, the experience was that underwhelming. But so far, I feel fine, so if I can actually digest my lunch without regretting it, I’ll be able to make my “famous” onion quiche again with those yellow onions!

And I’ll have to go back to La épicure for some 00 flour because I want to make myself some homemade fresh pasta, which, let me tell you, tastes like cooked glue if you don’t have egg in it!

I think my culinary life has changed. Giving it a few more hours before I celebrate, but the last time I had something super eggy, I knew almost immediately that I’d made a huge mistake, so I’m very optimistic!

(Post 62 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)

I am so sorry for those who are having such a difficult time during the pandemic. It feels almost cruel to be talking about how well things are going for me, but perhaps there are lessons in resilience to be learned from my experience. This pandemic was not the first time in my life that I woke up to the world as I knew it having ended and I’m sure it won’t be the last. You can’t grieve and/or be numb forever. There comes a point where you have to sift through the ashes, salvage what you can, and figure out how to keep moving forward.

But how can you do that when the future is so uncertain? How can you move forward when you can’t make any plans? Well, that’s the thing. No, we can’t plan on anything that involves travel or socialising with people. But you can perhaps focus on work or school or a hobby or relationships with people you live with, whatever  you still have that the pandemic cannot take away from you. In my case, that’s work. I work in an industry that had to find a way to push forward and keep moving. There might not be as much work as there was, that work might take a different form, but for someone who is adaptable, there is plenty of opportunity out there. I was concerned about work in April, but by mid May I knew I was going to be fine as I saw the U.S. legal system starting to come to grips with the idea of having to operate remotely.

So I’ve been working. And working. And working. I love the transcript proofreading work that I started doing at the end of last year. I keep getting more clients for that and dropping transcription clients. When I am completely done with transcription, I will have a lot to unload about that industry. But the years in it were not wasted as they have provided me with foundational skills that I can add on to. When I started proofreading transcripts, I don’t know how people told me that I wouldn’t last a year before setting that aside and studying to be a scopist instead, as that’s where the real money and interesting work is, but I had a lot of reasons to confidently say that that would not happen.

Scopist, you ask? Think about the general publishing business. You have a writer who creates a manuscript. That manuscript is then sent to an editor who fixes issues with content, syntax, grammar. The writer then produces a final draft, or proof, that is sent to the proofreader to look for any egregious errors that were missed — typos, formatting problems, issues with punctuation. Then, the manuscript goes to print.

It’s the same thing in the legal transcript world. The court reporter is the writer, who produces a stenographic record of the proceeding. The stenographic record is then machine-translated into English and sent to the editor, but in this world, the editor is called a scopist. The scopist makes sure that the steno was correctly translated and that the transcript is accurate and formatted properly. Then, the transcript is sent to the proofreader for a final glance before being returned to the court reporter who will apply any finishing touches and send it on to the ordering attorney.

With my experience in transcription, scoping is something that I have been doing for years, just not in the specialized software used by court reporters. It didn’t take me many jobs with my proofreading clients to start getting comments like, “You should be scoping,” “You’re wasted as a proofreader,” “Don’t settle for proofreading,” “There is a huge demand for scopists with your skills.” It also didn’t take long for some unethical reporters to try to pull a fast one on me and send me work that wasn’t scoped and try to pass it off as a particularly difficult proofreading job. Thankfully, with all of my experience in general proofreading, I know where the line is between editing and proofreading. So when court reporters start to cross the line, I have resources to give them that support my saying, “That’s not what you’re paying me to do.”

So why was I so resistant to scoping, a job that I knew I would excel at and that would very likely double my income in the first year or two? And what’s changed since the pandemic?

1) Wanting More Mobility

I’m rather tired of being chained to a desk. I think back to my time in Europe and how much of it I spent in makeshift offices transcribing. The idea of being able to work from an iPad was so alluring. I worked almost a full week while I was in Oaxaca, but at cafés, parks, and restaurants. The idea of being able to travel and still work at something that doesn’t feel like work without having to carry a ton of equipment was worth the economic sacrifice of continuing to settle for less money than my real earning potential.

Well…

With the pandemic, who knows when travel is going to start up again as something that we do easily, if ever. I can’t even think too hard about never being able to travel again because I’ll probably have a meltdown. So I’m instead, I’m focused on other goals that I always put as second to travel and mobility — buying a home, paying off debt, buying a car. Instead of proofreading on my iPad from my living room and bemoaning the fact that I’m not in Morelia or Paris, I can be in my office working at getting those other things so that they’ll be set in place by the time I can start travelling again. And when I can start travelling again, I should be making enough money to be able to tell scoping clients, “I’m off for two weeks at the end of September and won’t have my laptop, but feel free to send me some pages to proofread since I’ll have my iPad.” And on weeks when I’m feeling blah and like I don’t want to work too hard, I can still proofread. So I will have the best of both worlds!

2) Not Having the Money or Energy to Study Scoping

My proofreading course took ages because I was so tired at the end of the day. I certainly couldn’t afford to cut back on my hours to study either. The course itself was quite expensive, over $1,000USD, but doable, especially as a tax deduction. Scoping school, however, was $2,500USD + about $2,000 in software + a way more rigorous curriculum.

Well…

The proofreading course opened me up to the industry and I quickly figured out that I don’t need to go to scoping school; I just need a couple of continuing education classes to learn how to read stenography and how to use the software. So I contacted a few scoping schools to see if I could just take the modules I needed. The school I ended up going with reached out to me first from a Facebook post (!), was my second choice, and made me a great deal of $500 to access just the modules I’m missing. They also said they would try to get me a discount on the scoping software, which alone is $1,600USD, but I need other software too (more on that below). Even if I don’t get the discount, I’m looking at about half of what the full cost would have been a couple of years ago.

Moreover, now, I am well-enough buffered that as soon as I sent the payment to the scoping school, I dropped one of my transcription clients to free myself up some time to work on the course. I know that as soon as I get the software, even if I don’t feel comfortable scoping in it just yet (the software is super complex), I should at least be able to proofread in it. So I’m going to start getting a return on my investment pretty fast.

3) Lack of Ambition/Laziness/Misanthropy

I don’t know how much of this is just my personality and how much of it is this Canadian mentality of settling for good enough and not asking for too much out of life, but I’m not very ambitious and I’m pretty lazy. I do want work that is challenging and that pays well, but I don’t want the responsibilities or effort that go with that, so I’m happy to settle on work that is not challenging and pays just okay. I also don’t want anyone making demands on my time that I can’t control. The more I advance in my freelancing career, there is more expected of me and the less control I have over my time — I have client meetings regularly, taxes and bookkeeping are more difficult, I’m mentoring, and I’m now the final eyes on a transcript instead of the first so I can’t just dial it in. I can’t be an office drone anymore; I’m a professional and I need to start acting like one or scale way back.

Well…

I’m over that Canadian mentality of settling for good enough and not asking for too much out of life. I snapped at the last person who talked about my house buying plans and said, “Of course, you don’t need anything as big or nice as what you have now.” You know what? I might not need it, but do want it. I want a big house on a lovely lot with a pool. I want nice car in the driveway. When I leave the house, I want to be in clothes that come from a department, not thrift, store. I want someone to do my hair and nails every month. I want to sometimes go out for a meal that costs me a thousand pesos. I want to fly first class. I want a full-time housekeeper and maintenance person. And I want a job I love and that I’m excited to get out of bed for that will let me have all that in a number of working hours a week that gives me plenty of time to enjoy everything I’m working for. Living out this pandemic in my current house has made me realise just how important it is to live in a place that you love and that nourishes your soul and lets you explore your full potential.

4) Loathing of Windows

And now we come to the crux of the matter. I loathe Windows. I have refused to work in a Windows environment for years. I have turned down so many potentially great and lucrative contracts because I would have needed to work in Windows-only software. I hadn’t found a job or a situation that could make me envision going back to Windows from MacOS. I joked that I would do it when the apocalypse came.

Well…

The apocalypse came. And I found the job and am in the situation where working in Windows makes sense. It helps that there are now a lot more people in my situation than there were just a few years ago. I’ve found a whole support community of Windows-loathing Mac users who make it work. Most importantly, there is now software that would let me run Windows and the scoping software as essentially an application on my Mac. I wouldn’t actually be working in Windows. I would have Windows and the scoping software open alongside my Mac applications and would not use Windows for anything else. That was a game-changer, especially since I had the foresight to really over spec my Mac mini when I bought it two years ago, so I can effectively run both operating systems simultaneously.

So on top of the scoping software, I need a Windows license and a license for the software I will use to run Windows on my Mac (probably Parallels). I know it’s going to be a mess, but having like-minded people who are in the same situation to go to with questions eases my anxiety a little.

That’s the latest scoop. Soon, I will have reached the top of the transcription food chain, short of being a court reporter, all in time for my 10th anniversary of going into business for myself, which happens July of next year! I’m not settling just for that, though. Oh, no. I’m done settling! I joined a professional organization for editors and those in related fields, so I’m taking classes through them to brush up on my Chicago Manual of Style skills, which I used in that proofreader contract that paid for my European adventures. So I definitely want to continue doing general proofreading as well. I’m no longer a transcriptionist. I’m an editor and proofreader. It’s what I always wanted, but I just didn’t know how to get there. Somehow, against all odds, I made it!

Before I sign off, I promised pictures with these sponsored posts, so here are a few things from the last month.

Braces are going GREAT. They’re almost all straight now. In two weeks, I will get the elastics put in that will bring them back and correct my overbite. My dentist says I should be done by the end of the year! (No, that’s not a booger in my nose — it’s the “screw” for my nose stud!)

This house is in my neighbourhood. It does not look like it belongs in Mexico! I stumbled upon it on Google Maps and didn’t believe it was real, so I went out in search of it. It is real. Very odd!

I can imagine having an entrance like this in my own house, instead of painting the whole wall pink. 🙂

My favourite supermarket, Superama, now carries vegan mayonnaise. I’ve been on mayonnaise overdose, trying out all the things I’ve been missing out on, like creamy coleslaw, tartar sauce, and, of course, tomato sandwiches with mayo!

Speaking of Superama, they get butternut squash about once a year. I bought nearly 1,000 pesos’ worth of it (five small) and roasted them to enjoy over the next few months. Here, it is served with just butter and some freshly grated nutmeg. The pork chop is from my rancher friends, and, yes, B was sitting patiently waiting to get that gristle!

B was having some trouble with her teeth. That’s now resolved and she can eat her favourite treat again!

I adopted three plants last September. They are still alive and looking great. Go me!

My friend Jan and I see each other about every 10 days, alternating hosting. The minute I got B’s leash off at his house, she jumped on the couch. It’s wonderful to see my anxious, timid girl so comfortable in other surroundings.

Jan was hosting this week. We are in dry law for the foreseeable future, so I haven’t had beer in ages. He had a few left and pulled one out to toast my move into scoping! He provides food and I “cook” (he doesn’t have a stove). I made tasty potato wedges on a hot plate and these microwaveable ribs were so tender and better than most I’ve had at a rib house! Great treat of a meal. 🙂

B doesn’t tolerate cats on the property here, but had no problem sharing the couch with Dodger. Dodger is a bit savage, but this time, she let me pet her!

Have you heard about this awesome community of RVers that can also save you money? Boondockers Welcome is not just a service that allows you to camp on private property for free but it’s also a great way to connect with other RVers or learn more about the RV lifestyle. Use this link to find out more about this great community. #ThisIsBoondockersWelcome

This resource came out a little too late for me to be able to use it as an RVer… but just in time for me to pay forward all the times others let me stay at their properties. I’ve enjoyed having guests at Haven over the years, whether I am there or not.

(Post 61 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)

Wow, I cannot believe how long it has been since my last post! Well, normally I could, but not when I have so many sponsored posts to write! When I said I was realigning, I sure wasn’t kidding. I’ve had one day off since the middle of May. Whew!

I’m really serious about moving from this house into my very own house and I’ve started to set up the foundation for savings success. I went to my bank here, HSBC, to set up a savings account. The executive asked me my plans for said savings account and then said that a traditional savings account is not the best solution for me, but rather, I should put money into an investment fund. I balked, saying that I want daily access to my money, not to put it away long-term. She explained that they have a daily (diario) fund that is 3.87% versus 1.5% interest and that the only real difference is that I lose being able to do transfers from the investment account to the chequing account 24/7 — transfers done Mon-Fri in the mornings are immediate, but otherwise, I get the money on the next business day. I can work with that for the higher interest!

On the Canada side of things, I’ve been taking advantage of lower expenses to really slam my debt. I’ve been on a serious debt repayment plan for a year now. I expected to be at about 20% paid off by now and am at more than 30%! Today, I was finally eligible to move my credit card debt to a new card with a much lower interest rate!

I’ve gotten some answers about what my path to homeownership could look like. The most likely option is going to be a mortgage, which would require me to have 45% of the cost of the house upfront in cash, 35% for the downpayment and 10% for all the closing fees. So if I set myself the target of having my own home within 18 months, that puts me at a maximum house price of $1 million pesos (45,000USD/61,000CAD). That’s very tight for what I want, really reducing my choices, but still realistic.

Another option I’m not discounting if I find the right one is a new build in a development north of the periferico — some of the developers are starting to freak out and offer really good deals, like only a 10% deposit and then they finance the rest. But considering I’ve only so far seen one house in one development at any price range that even remotely looks like something I’d want to live in, the odds of going this route are slim. I really more envision myself buying a small tired house on a bigger lot in an established neighbourhood and then improving the house to my standards than buying new. I’ll have a better idea of where I’m heading in the months ahead when I start to build up my savings and have a better idea of when I’ll reach my goals.

Now, here are some highlights of the past month. My gardener was here doing the annual cactus trim. A friend came up from centro and took these two trimmings with him to try to plant in his own garden. It worked — he got a bunch of new growth! I’m so happy they did not go to waste.

A friend is moving house and made me great deal on a power washer that is a lot of fun to play with and has really improved the yard:

Turns out one of my neighbours makes all kinds of sausages, including English-style bangers! My onion gravy turned out at least as good as that at the fancy pub in London I ate at four years ago.

Bonita has engaged full guard dog mode now that people aren’t coming by regularly. Here she is watching the neighbour on his roof. She would run out and yell at him to stay on his side of the wall!

After my gardener left a mess in the laundry room the last time he was here, I finally decided to order him some storage! This cheap and lightweight shelving unit was only about 300 pesos with delivery and perfect for the space!

The house came with a really old microwave oven that sometimes would start up on its own (eep). I decided to buy myself a new one. I’ve never actually shopped for a microwave oven. I didn’t have one my first five years on my own, the first two were gifts from friends upgrading, and the third was the one that came with Miranda! Shopping for one ended up not being as overwhelming as I expected once I focused on the task. The model I picked was on sale everywhere that week (Costco had the worst price, BestBuy the best), was just a few hundred pesos more than a basic model, and offers such features as a broiler and a keep warm function. I’m delighted with it.

The butter melting function is very useful!

But check out the “Latino menu.” LOL! It’s all chicken nuggets and French fries, not a tortilla or rice and beans in sight, as I would have expected!

I’m still doing my green smoothie in my Vitamix every morning. After he brought me two such orders in a few weeks, my driver broke down and asked me what the hell I do with all this spinach and celery! Let me tell you, it goes fast!

I placed a huge order from the bulk nut place — almonds, cashews, pecans, chia seeds, and peanuts.

Then tried my hand at making peanut butter in my Vitamix. It worked like magic. I could not believe that 500G of peanuts liquified like this!

My friend Jan and I decided to start occasionally visiting again as we have very little contact with other people and are going stir crazy. I invited him over for dinner one night, making his favourite of curry (he’s Brit!). I had him sit in the dining room while I cooked in the kitchen and then we sat at opposite ends of the table. It felt really good to have a semblance of normalcy again. Then, the other day, I decided to take him up on his offer of popping over for a late lunch/early dinner. Bonita always comes with me when we go to Jan’s and she was so happy to go out! As soon as we turned onto his street, she knew where she was going and picked up the pace. When she arrived, she promptly jumped onto the sofa and made herself at home! She adores Jan — he’s the only other person she will go to on her own for attention.

The only other news is that Yucatán is back to being dry for the foreseeable future and we also have a curfew. We’re really on the brink of losing control of this thing (ie. over-saturating the healthcare system) and the governor acted quickly, reminding the populace that economic reopening does not mean social reopening and putting in measures to keep us at home. We’re in good hands. Hope you can say the same wherever you are!

(Post 60 of 233. Thanks again to those who participated in the Fundrazr!)

This day three months ago, I started my lockdown. I remain infinitely grateful that I was able to get in my trip to Oaxaca first.

The first two months of lockdown were somewhat of a shock, a bit of “This can’t be real and can’t last,” so I found myself kind of just floating through my days. Everything was uncertain. I’d come back from Oaxaca very tired and footsore, so it took ages to get back into an exercise routine. Work was coming only in fits and spurts, so I had a lot of financial uncertainty. But as the weeks progressed, I started to adapt and create a “new normal” for myself in the current world context and the predictions for the months — and years — ahead. If there is anything about myself that I like, it is that I am resilient and adaptable.

Work sorting itself out really helped. I’m now at something like 33 days and counting of averaging seven hours of work a day. That’s plus admin time. 🥱 I’m not doing as much proofreading as I’d like versus transcription, but considering how many freelancers I know have zero income right now, I’m not complaining!

The biggest thing that’s come out of lockdown is a realignment of financial priorities that came to a head with the roof leaking as badly as it did during the storm two weeks ago. The Oaxaca trip was supposed to be the start of my starting to travel again. I was thinking of going to Quebec this summer and Peru this autumn (provided I could find a dogsitter, of course). I can’t be planning for travel in the current world context. I know lots of people are, but I think that’s just going to lead to a lot of heartbreak, wasted time and energy, and loss of money. For me, it’s not the right thing to be focusing on now.

What makes sense to focus on right now are to continue paying down my debt and to find a workable path to homeownership.

The debt is going really well. I’m a quarter of the way there, which leaves me in disbelief. I’ve had a lot of false starts in that regard, but I’m making steady progress now. I’ve given up trying to give myself an end goal — my income is just too erratic for that — but instead I focus on continually moving forward at a rate of at least 1% a month. Slow and steady wins the race and all that.

As for homeownership, it’s interesting how the lockdown has changed my perspective on a lot of things. I came back from Oaxaca eager to explore other cities and states and all the more certain that I didn’t want to stay in Mérida long-term. Now, I know I’m in the right place to ride out just about any crisis the world wants to throw our way. I’ve reconciled the things I’m not fond of here and have made the choice of deciding this is where I need to start rooting myself for the long-term. No more looking just two, five, even ten years out. Time to start looking twenty years out — I’ll be on the cusp of retirement by then and nearing the end of my life expectancy, even! I need to stop living like I’m twenty or thirty and accept that I’m in my forties now and start thinking about what I’m going to do when I’m ready to stop working.

The issue with the roof leaking made me realise just how badly I want to get out of renting. My landlords increased my rent, saying that they would keep on top of all the big maintenance and I would have to take care of the little things. Great. But they have proven that their idea and mine of keeping on top of big maintenance are not the same. The entire roof needs work, but they would only agree to a patch job. Am I really going to live with a leaky roof every summer for the foreseeable future? Or am I going to pay out of pocket to maintain a roof on a home that isn’t mine? Or am I going to simply move to another rental house?

Well, I spent some time looking at other rentals and, wow, the market has changed in the last three years! After hours scouring every rental resource I could find, there wasn’t a single thing in my budget that would have made me want to get off the couch and go look at it in person. This house has really spoiled me and, leaky roof and lack of pool notwithstanding, has gone from being at the market rate to being a bargain! I made the decision that, if at all possible, I don’t want to move again unless it’s directly into my own home. So time to figure out how to make that happen

Finding a path to homeownership sounds daunting enough in your home country, and even more so in a new country where your expat network insists that homeownership is not a possibility if you can’t pay cash. I refused to accept that and dug deeper. I spoke to my bank and a few peer lending companies. All said that there is credit out there for someone like me, yes, someone who is self-employed (and not even within this country!) and a foreigner. I will have to find a large deposit and accept high interest rates and that homeownership is not something I can plan on happening for at least two more years. But if I can shoulder all that, it can happen within the next five.

The fellow doing the roofing work here and I had a really good chat. He knows this house well. He walked me through a lot of the objections I have to buying it if I had the means, from the cost of a cosmetic overhaul to annual maintenance costs to projections for how the neighbourhood and the city might change over the next twenty years. I really love this house and I know it could be the perfect forever home, but I just don’t see a path to buying it in my current financial context. Well, unless someone wants a guaranteed 8-10% (typical mortgage rates here) return on a 90,000USD investment by giving me a personal loan!

So, realistically, I’m looking to buy something a lot smaller than this house, ideally under a million pesos (about $45,000USD) and in this neighbourhood (because I’m already very rooted here), older, and needing a cosmetic upgrade, but in liveable condition. That feels a lot more attainable in two to three years than any of the plans folks have thrown out for how I might acquire my current house. So that’s what I’m focusing on. Well, there is also the possibility of buying a brand new home in one of the developments outside of the city — that would actually be my quickest path to homeownership as their deposits are much lower — but I don’t like the new developments with the houses so close together, not being able to walk to anything, or the “modern” style of construction. I really want to stay in an established, walkable neighbourhood and have a home with a bit of character. Just making that decision is a huge step forward!

The only other “exciting” thing going on is that I am cooking so, so much. The new freezer was the missing piece in my kitchen. I can now shop and cook in bulk and that has made such a difference. It’s hard to keep a stocked pantry here due to the humidity ruining food very quickly. I can use the deep freezer to keep so many ingredients fresh. Now, I can stock things that I used to have to buy for a specific recipe. I can also freeze portioned meals. I don’t know how many times in the last month that I was about to order dinner because I didn’t feel like cooking but instead raided the freezer for curried beef, baked pasta, soup, or even Tex-Mex-style burritos to just pop in the microwave instead.

I’m trying my hand at all sorts of new things. Remember that I was a vegetarian for 15 years, so I’m still learning how to cook meat properly. My project the last month has been roast chicken. Don’t mind how anemic this bird looks — my broiler compartment isn’t tall enough to be able to brown the top of a bird — it was SO moist and succulent. I had no idea roasted chicken breast could be that good! Of course, the carcass goes to making stock, which I store in the freezer in small portions.

And then, I can grab some of that stock out of the freezer, along with udon noodles, shrimp, and veggies to make a wonderful 10-minute soup!

I keep buying myself new tools for the kitchen. I have a new two-burner cast iron comal/griddle incoming from Amazon (remind me to share the why for that purchase in a future post because it’s a pretty funny story). I have also soothed some of the regret of having managed to twice forget my huge cutting board on Miranda’s stove. A large wooden cutting board has been surprisingly difficult to find here — I’ve asked artisans and also looked in fancy department and kitchen stores. I had one on my shopping list for Oaxaca, but could only find small ones. So when a vendor I trust offered these up for sale with all proceeds going to buy despensas (pantry staples) for local communities economically ravaged by both COVID and Tropical Storm Cristóbal, that was an easy 1,000 pesos to spend!

And then, I promptly put in an order to my local honey supplier for some pure beeswax so I can make “spoon butter,” a conditioner for wooden cutting boards and utensils!

That is the beauty of getting rooted somewhere, establishing relationships with local suppliers and simply knowing where to find things. As a repeat customer, I was given the beautiful sheet of beeswax even though it was probably worth 30 or 40 pesos!

I promptly melted half of the beeswax into some oil to make the spoon butter. I cannot wait to condition all my dull wooden spoons as well!

Finally, Yucatán is starting to open up a little, so I’m going to make an effort to go out at least once a week now, just to get back into the swing of things. This week’s outing was to the dentist (just a regular check on how the braces are doing appointment) and to get groceries (I’d rather keep getting groceries delivered!). So it was time to buy some masks as we will have to wear them for the foreseeable future. I’m tired of going out looking like Chevy Chase in The Invisible Man!

So I decided to support a local entrepreneur by buying handmade masks. Please, I don’t want to get into “the mask” thing with anyone. Law is I need something over my face, so I’ve got something over my face. At least, now it’s something pretty and easy to put on and remove!