the French Farm

This is the French Farm - a farm owned and established by...wait for it...a French guy. He raises all sorts of fowl and pigs and produce for hotels and ex-pats in the Gurgaon area. We had heard about him long ago but never tried to find out more. When I wanted a turkey for Thanksgiving, tho, we decided to check it out. Randy and I and Christelle and her kids went out there, to the sticks. Our kids didn't want to come, but they should have, it was fun! He had chicks that he let the kids hold, and baby pigs, and HUGE pigs too. It's all free-range and organic, and they went to some trouble to explain how they feed and clean up and all that. The only thing I care about organic is that is costs more!

Looking in at all the critters.

He has geese, turkeys, chickens, Japanese quail, ducks. Turkeys are UGLY! we didn't really pick the one we wanted, we just told him how big of a turkey we wanted. Most of the biggest ones were spoken for already, so we ordered 2 that were about 4 kg each. Total cost, 3400 rupees, about $75 USD. ouch. But hey, it's organic right?

Thanksgiving. sort of.

Last year we didn't do anything for Thanksgiving, since the kids had school and Randy worked, and I'm Canadian :)

This year, we were asked to host some of the missionaries for dinner. I had two turkeys delivered from the French Farm (see the blog entry about that) and set about figuring out how to cook a non-pop-up-button equipped turkey in a toaster oven. Luckily Mom came up with the brilliant idea to cook one the night before, and good thing, because the heat was too low and it was in for 5 hours!! At 1am I took it out, and hang the consequences! It was cooked, a bit too much, but edible. The next day I cooked the other one, and it turned out perfect (higher heat, more basting, etc). Like a ding-dong (or perhaps a frazzled cook) I didn't take any photos of the food, but we ate good - potatoes, gravy, peas and carrots, rolls, stuffing and apple crisp for dessert. We had two sets of missionaries, from our branch, with one American and one Indian in each companionship. Not any American Indians, altho that would have been appropriate!

We made them hold the sign. It is all part of singing for your supper here at the Leavitt house. From the left is Elder Chilumula, Elder Hawks, Elder Carmen, and Elder Adari.

After dinner, Alex thought we should all make toilet paper tube pilgrims and Indians (the native amer. kind) (we did this once several years ago with Clancy's and it was very fun) but she forgot to figure out instructions, and we didn't have black paper. Hard to make a pilgrim without black!! So while we all hemmed and hawed about what to do, Elder Carmen decided to make Santa Claus and then we were all off. I totally copied him. But I had cooked, so it was ok.

Here is the first batch.... notice the one Native American that came to our feast - he is Randy's minimum participation person. He started out as only a face, but decency (and I) demanded a loincloth.

Batch two showed some real creativity, and some randomness as well :) Elder Chilumula's is pretty wild - not even HE knew what it was!! And Elder Hawks' pope/disco king was a highlight too. I hope the Elders had fun, we all did.

And the unpleasant aftermath. I think every dish we own and several of the Taylor's pots and dishes were dirty! Good thing the new maid does the dishes!!

the National Museum in Delhi

Doesn't this look like a happy bunch?? And this was the very first thing they saw! We went to the National Museum on a Saturday, and despite being all geared up for a fight, we got in at the Indian price no problem. Which meant, even paying for a camera (yes, you have to pay to bring a camera, more if it is a video camera) the total for the 6 of us was 44 rupees. I love that! The kids were one whole rupee each at the student rate. Anyway, they were mad I was making them go anywhere, since all they want to do is sit in front of the TV, but we did see some cool stuff. This stone Egyptian bust was the first thing we saw, and ended up being the oldest thing too, as it is from about 1000BC. There were lots of stone carvings in the main halls.
This was in the textiles area, which I thought was pretty sparse, considering the textile industry in India today. It is an embroidered boardgame, with ivory game pieces.

The museum is a round building, with a circular courtyard in the middle. There were some statues in the courtyard, but it was about 90 degrees out, so we saw them thru the window.

Lots of awesome carved wood lintels and tons of stone. (haha, little museum humour there) Much of the stone stuff had people that were... how to put it delicately ...underdressed. And then they had some polished parts. Can you see what I mean? Alex was grossed out. And later, when we went into a new gallery, she said "oh please, no more art of naked people!" She is NOT into it.

Sam is standing beside a very tall, very heavy trumpet.
Isaac is knocking on a 15cm thick door from the 14th century.

This is a gold-plated top of a temple - the very top of the spire even held a diamond!

You know how Isaac loves that self-portrait setting!

Oooh, the money room! Who doesn't love that? The coins thru the ages were pretty cool - square, round, solid, with holes, gold, silver, brass, copper, stone and shell. Some were big and some were sooooo tiny. Isaac's finger shows how small this one is.
We did like this, but on the way in to this exhibit, I read the sign and said "ooh, a numismatic gallary" and Isaac says "what does that mean? Bored?" he's funny, in a lippy kind of way :)





The dancing god is Shiva, god of dance. Pretty famous. That one and the one with all the arms are the only ones I was even vaugely familiar with before we came here. Of course, many of the exhibits would be more interesting if we knew the legends and stories of their history. So many of the paintings depict scenes of gods doing legendary stuff, and we know nothing.

A couple kids, lost in the desert, in need of water. One section had empty cases, so we fooled around for a bit, before the guard came to tell us to knock it off.
These guys were just inside the door of the Hall of Arms. I don't know, their arms aren't much to write home about. Look at those toothbpicks!

The Marine History room - Sam liked the replicas of the tall ships. Holy rigging, Batman!
I like the traditional painting on silk - I have bought several (cheap ones, of course). Randy thinks it is too two-dimensional, but I love the colours. We saw it demo'd at a gallary (Jaipur I think) where they crush the rocks and mix with water to make the paint, then use a tiny brush - maybe one hair - to paint.







Everyone loves the Armory - what is not to like about 6 foot muskets and wavy swords and elephant armour?

Muskets and powder horns.

Randy and Alex saw these spikey ankle trap things that go on the elephants - what they didn't get is why the spikes would be on the INSIDE of the ankle trap ???


I like the lethal-looking two-blade dagger things. Love that wavy blade!

Copper plates - a good way to store records and documents you want to last for hundreds or thousands of years. Gee, where have I heard that idea before?? And here is Vanna, to tell us more...



This sitar belonged to Eddie van Kumar. According to Randy.

This fits into the category of things you shouldn't really have to say on a sign... can you read it? and we DID see guards and cleaning crew sitting around upstairs under an identical sign.


This is the coded law of (I think) Sumeria. It is OLD - about the same age as the Egyptian bust.





The giant thing under glass is a five-tier temple chariot. It represents the spiritaul asprirations of a community. On auspicious days the temple diety would be loaded into the chariot and the people would, together, pull the chariot thru the village. Don't know why, just read it on the sign.

Hooray for cheap museums!!