Rainbow

The best part about the rainy season in Mexico is all the rainbows.

Coconut raspados

At long last, pictures of the coconut raspados. By the way, shaving the ice is a lot harder than you would think.

Firefox add-ons that will probably not change your life.

Seems like there are a billion lists of "Firefox add-ons that will CHANGE your Life." I doubt my list will change anyone's life, but here are the add-ons that I have installed in Firefox--I use them all regularly, so no fluff here:

• Ad-block Plus: I just installed it this morning, and it took me a few minutes to realize that the ads were gone and pages really do load faster. I don't know why I didn't install it sooner. (I know, I create digital advertising for a living...what can I say?)
  
• Delicious Bookmarks: Love it for bookmarking. I haven't used browser-based favorites for years.
  
• Download Statusbar: Replaces the download window, which keeps my desktop tidier. Apparently has other features that I haven't tried out.
• DownThemAll: Great when I purchase an album from GoMusic--I can start all songs downloading in one click.
  
• Drag & Drop.io: I love drop.io and this makes it super easy to add files and manage Drops.
  
• FoxTab: My new all-time favorite. It's kind of like Exposé for Firefox tabs.
  
• FoxyTunes: Puts iTunes controls in the Firefox status bar. Saves switching to iTunes when Milli Vanilli comes up in shuffle.
  
• Google Gears: Installed so I can use offline Gmail and sync my iCal. Had to go without for a few weeks after upgrading to Firefox 3.5, but Google caught up this morning so I'm back online...er offline, that is.
  
• GreaseMonkey: Necessary for Facebook Purity, which blocks quiz and application messages from my Facebook feed. Sorry, but I don't actually care what type of pickle represents your favorite 80's movie.
  
• Read It Later: Kind of a holding area for links that I don't want to deal with now, but don't necessarily want to bookmark and tag in Delicious.
  
• ScreenGrab: It's like having Snaggit integrated in my browser. Especially great since I can't remember the keystrokes to take a screen grab on a Mac.

It's amazing how useful some of these add-ons are. A big thank you to all the developers!

Memories of Sesame Street

I LOVED this guy.

Squid Chunks in their Ink

A can of "Squid Chunks in their Ink" came free with my box of crackers, so I thought it was time to try it out.
I'm....not a fan.

Recipe for Snow Cones

Okay, they're not called snow cones here, they're called nieves or raspados, but they're basically the same principle as a snow cone: shaved ice and yummy syrup. Well, snow cone syrup isn't known for its yumminess in the US, but here in Mexico, raspados are made with fresh fruit and they're delicious.

I got lucky and found an ice scraper at the tionges in Tonala for $30 pesos (that's about $2.25 US), so I've been wanting to make raspados for a while. I finally got down and dirty in the kitchen today.

Only one problem, all the recipes I could find were in Spanish. Now, my day to day Spanish is getting pretty good--it should be after living in "real" Mexico for 3 months. But following a recipe in another language is a whole other kind of challenge. For example, what does deshacerla mean? Google translate helps, but it's not perfect. Factor in the difference in units of measurement and the need to substitute ingredients and reduce the quantity, and the whole process gets a little challenging. But I've always loved a good challenge.

Here's the original recipe that I found for raspados de coco:

Hierve 3 litros de agua por 5 minutos.Agrega 6 tazas de azúcar y mueve para deshacerla.Vacía 4 tazas de leche en polvo con 1 taza de fécula de maíz, mueve.Agrega 2 kg de coco rallado y 2 latas de leche condensada.Cocina 15 minutos y deja enfriar y espesar.

Here's the recipe I ended up making:
1 liter water
1 cup sugar
1 cup powdered milk
1/4 cup corn starch
200 grams toasted grated coconut + 1 cup diced fresh young coconut
1 can sweetened condensed milk

Boil the water and turn the heat to low; dissolve the sugar (I cut the original recipe's sugar in half and it's still very sweet).  Mix the powdered milk and corn starch together and add to the hot water mixture, stirring to dissolve. Add the coconut and condensed milk, and cook over low heat for approximately 15 minutes. When I was done, my mixture was very thick, so I ended up adding another cup of water just before I turned off the heat.

Tomorrow the ice will be frozen, so I'll post pictures of my raspados de coco and give an update on how they tasted.